'Pant Will Score 100 Every Game If...'

'He has all the shots -- reverse sweep, slog sweep, everything -- but the problem is that all these shots are high-risk shots.'
'With his defence, he will surely score runs every game if he faces 200 balls.'

Ravichandran Ashwin hailed Rishabh Pant for having 'one of the best defences in world cricket'.

Pant, who came in for severe, unwarranted criticism from Sunil Gavaskar, for his poor shot selection during the 4th Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, had an underwhelming Border-Gavaskar Trophy series.

In the fifth and final Test at the Sydney Cricket Ground, Pant batted with restraint in one innings, (40 in 98 balls) and then hit a stroke-filled 33-ball 61 in the next.

At Melbourne during the fourth Test, Pant had also played a knock of 30 in 104 balls during a run-chase of 340 runs, showing great restraint.

Speaking on his Youtube channel, Ashwin praised Pant saying: 'Pant rarely gets out playing a defence. He has got one of the best defences in world cricket. Defence has become a challenging aspect, he has the best defence with a soft hand.

'I have bowled to him a lot in the nets, he has not gotten out, he doesn't get an edge, he does not get LBW, he has the best defence. I have tried telling it to him. One opinion about Rishabh was that he plays a lot of shots, he has to fight it out in Test cricket,' Ashwin added.

Hailing Pant's ability to singlehandedly turn a match on its head, Ashwin said a lot of his shots are high-risk, something that is not allowing him to realise his full potential.

Pant scored the second-fastest Test fifty by an Indian during the fifth match of the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series after a hard-fought 40 in the first innings of the same game.

'We have to tell him properly what he has to do if he has to bat solid or bat with intent. He hasn't scored a lot of runs, but he didn't play like someone without runs. He has a lot of time on his hands. Rishabh Pant is yet to realise his fullest potential,' Ashwin said.

'He has all the shots -- reverse sweep, slog sweep, everything -- but the problem is that all these shots are high-risk shots. With his defence, he will surely score runs every game if he faces 200 balls.

'The point is finding that middle game. If he combines all of it, he will score 100 runs every game. He has to find that middle game.'

During the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series, Pant scored 255 runs in nine innings at an average of 28.33, and a strike rate of 59.02, with one half-century. He was the sixth-highest run-getter in the series.