Rishabh Pant found another use for the bat that has played some extraordinary shots. Many a batter can feel pain after losing his wicket. India’s vice-captain did, in a different sense, the hobbling hero who had limped out to the middle, finding the way back to the Old Trafford dressing room required the stairs. The bat became a walking stick for the man with the fractured foot.
Pant has played some remarkable innings over the year. The improviser extraordinaire conjured another on a day when he wasn’t expected to be seen at all. The bare fact is that he made 17 runs, with one six and two fours, before Jofra Archer sent his off-stump cartwheeling out of the ground. He did so on one leg, with a foot that was bloodied and swollen from the previous day, when it felt the last sight of him in the series would be when he departed on the golf buggy that masqueraded as an ambulance, his sock off, the damage apparent even before the scans at the hospital.
