Ricky Ponting has full faith in Rishabh Pant’s match-winning abilities and is hopeful that the talented wicketkeeper-batsman will be back in India’s playing XI during the ongoing T20 International series against New Zealand.
Ponting is the head coach of Delhi Capitals and along with Pant played a major role in the franchise reaching its first Indian Premier League play-off in seven years during the 2019 edition.
Pant, who suffered from concussion during India’s One-Day International against Australia in Mumbai recently, is now fit but KL Rahul has done well as his replacement in both ODIs as well as T20 Internationals.
“Rishabh Pant is a young man with a huge amount of talent. I’m looking forward to working with him again during the IPL and I’m sure he’ll be back in the Indian team sooner rather than later,” Ponting answered during a Q&A session on social media platform Twitter.
“I’m looking forward to working with the young Indian players that I coach at Delhi Capitals, in particular Prithvi Shaw, Shreyas Iyer and Rishabh Pant,” he added.
The 22-year-old Pant has so far played 11 Tests, 16 ODIs and 28 T20Is for India.
Ponting also commented on a number of other topics during his Twitter interaction.
Talking about the most complete batsman in today’s day and age, the former Australia captain said: “Hard to separate Virat Kohli and Steve Smith.”
Asked to pick the three greatest fielders of all time, Ponting chose Andrew Symonds, AB de Villiers and Jonty Rhodes.
Another interesting thing Ponting spoke about was his technique to hit the pull shot. The batting great had one of the most devastating pull shots the game has ever seen. With his high back-lift and brilliant hand-eye co-ordination, the right-hander could pull the fastest bowlers away with ease.
“When I’m coaching people how to play a good pull shot, I always tell them to hit the ball as early as they can with fully extended arms and to practice hitting it hard every single time,” said Ponting.
(With inputs from PTI)