Rayudu calls Pant ‘stubborn’ as the latter’s shambolic IPL continues while telling him to admit that he is out of form.
Rayudu calls Pant ‘pretty stubborn’ and tells him to ‘accept the fact that he is struggling’.
What is the matter with Rishabh Pant? The Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) captain’s “very, very bad patch” in the 2025 Indian Premier League was attributed by Ambati Rayudu to his “pretty stubborn” refusal to switch positions in the batting lineup. Additionally, Rayudu believes Pant is more suited to play as an opener and lacks the mentality to play in the middle order.
Pant, who cost INR 27 crore to purchase at the most recent IPL auction, has only scored 128 runs in ten innings this season. He’s only had one half-century and five single-digit scores, including a duck. Pant is now ranked 176th in a list that considers the overall influence a player has had on his team.
He battled to hit a 17-ball 18 in the 237 chase and was dismissed at No. 4 after taking two early wickets in Sunday’s encounter against Punjab Kings (PBKS). After losing the game by 37 runs, LSG dropped to seventh place in the standings with six defeats in 11 games.
“I think, at this point in time, I’m feeling very sorry for him because he’s not been changing his batting order or his approach,” Rayudu said on ESPNcricinfo’s Time Out. “I think he’s being pretty stubborn about how he wants to go about things. It’s not working in his favour at the moment. It happens in this sport, to be very honest, and he is going through a very, very bad patch. It can happen to anybody. I just hope that he takes this learning and improves on it and doesn’t become even more stubborn, but just accept the fact that he is struggling and start doing things a little differently [and] try and get better every day. That’s all you can do.
“I think more than anything it’s just the clarity of what he wants to do because Pant ideally for me is an opener in white-ball cricket, because in the middle order he has not been great. I know he loves playing in the middle but he doesn’t have the batsmanship that is required or the skill set. Maybe he has the skillset, but not the mindset to execute that.”