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Former England skipper Eoin Morgan shares his views on Rishabh Pant, Sanju Samson, Virat Kohli and India's biggest challenge in T20 World Cup.
Rishabh Pant has taken very little time to operate at his best since returning to the game following a horrific car crash. Thus, the X-factor player walks into India's playing eleven at the T20 World Cup, feels former England skipper Eoin Morgan.
Pant, who is back in action after 14 months, has already smashed two fifties in five games and has a strike rate of 154.54 in IPL 2024.
The other contenders for the wicketkeeper-batter's slot are Sanju Samson, Ishan Kishan and Jitesh Sharma, but Pant has pushed himself at the top of the pecking order with his performance so far.
Asked why he would pick Pant over the others, Morgan spoke with crystal clarity.
" (I would pick him) because he is the player that he is. I don't see him being hampered in anyway coming back from his car crash. For me he is a very disruptive player.
"As a leftie he can play a big role in the middle order and add a huge amount of pressure as opposed to generic right-handers," said the ODI World Cup-winning captain in his response to a query during an interaction organised by Jio Cinema.
The selectors are expected to pick India's squad for the ICC event in the first week of May and old warhorse Virat Kohli is another certainty in the final-15.
Very difficult to point fingers at Kohli for RCB's slide
Morgan, an astute leader himself, reckons that Kohli's strike-rate in the IPL thus far cannot be questioned, especially because the other batters are not complementing him.
It is still early days in the IPL but Kohli leads the batting charts by a big margin, aggregating 316 runs in five innings, at a strike rate of 146.29.
RCB are languishing at the bottom of the table as the other players have not delivered as per expectations.
"It is very difficult to point finger at a guy who is the holder of the Orange cap and the rest of the batting line is not scoring runs. I don't see a point in that. For RCB, they are struggling with the bowling and the rest of the batting; why would I place blame on someone who is scoring the majority of the runs?" asked Morgan.
Mayank Yadav is really exciting; Sanju Samson a standout captain
Before Mayank Yadav was sidelined with fitness issues, the IPL rookie produced back-to-back man of the match performances in the IPL. Bowling consistently around the 150kmph mark, he hurried the batters with pace and also impressed the greats of the game with his accuracy.
"He is just an X-factor player. I am trying to remember after I first saw him bowl, bowling upwards of 150kmph; who would have been the quickest Indian bowler that would I have played against? There is nobody who bowls quicker than he does or with the accuracy that he does. That is exciting."
On the best Indian captain in the IPL so far, Morgan picked Sanju Samson of Rajasthan Royals.
"If you look at Hardik Pandya, he had success in a short span of time with GT. Now he is with Mumbai and starting to turn things around. You can't put a price on winning; as a captain that is what you are judged on.
"Probably the stand-out skipper has been Sanju Samson. I say that because of one key factor. His use of Riyan Parag, not just promoting him up the order at number four, how outspoken he has been about wanting him to bat at four.
"One of the hardest things to do as captain is to instill confidence and belief in a player to make them better players. Sanju has done with Riyan," opined Morgan.
India's biggest challenge in T20 WC…
In a couple of months, India will be trying to win an elusive ICC trophy. They play all their league games in the T20 World Cup in the USA before moving to the Caribbean for the Super Eight stage of the competition.
"India's biggest challenge in T20 WC will be adapting to conditions," said Morgan.
"They play Ireland and Pakistan in New York on a pitch we don't know what it is going to be like. It should be an excellent venue but there is no previous information about the pitch. For me that can cause issues.
"It is one of the hardest things. Winning away from home is about how you play conditions and in T20 it can be difficult."