IPL 2025 hasn’t been so great for Rishabh Pant, who was bought by the Lucknow Super Giants for big bucks during the last auction. The team was failing and Pant just hadn’t found his way with the bat yet; 128 runs in 10 innings, 63 of them coming from a single game.
Aaron Finch, the former Australian opener and World T20-winning captain, thinks Pant is having communication problems with the bowlers à la wicketkeeper. To avoid this, the umpires are on the clock and penalize teams for bowling beyond the specified period, resulting in some extra fielders in the ring for the final over and a hefty fine for the captain.
“‘It must be tough captaining while keeping wickets,’ Finch said on Jiohotstar. ‘You only have a few seconds to communicate with your bowlers. There is a lot of pressure on getting the overs in on time, so you only have 10-15 seconds to talk, if that, before the next ball. So there is a lot put on Nicholas Pooran to help relay messages, and it can be hard to stick to a plan because the bowler’s thinking can be changed with every ball.'”
Finch felt that Pant may want to forgo keeping and let Pooran do it for a couple of games. “Maybe he could say, ‘Hey Pooran, can you keep for a game? I need to get my rhythm back and sort out how to talk to bowlers better to manage the game.’ It gets tricky to talk strategy behind the stumps.”
He has also noted how the pace of the game has changed. “One or two balls can completely change the momentum of the game, so communication with the bowler will be key. With guys like Shreyas Iyer at mid-off and Shubman Gill at mid-on, they are always around,” he added.
