Nearly 40 years ago, coming to the wicket after the Indian innings was in tatters -- Sunil Gavaskar had made 8, Arun Lal 35, Dilip Vengasarkar a duck, Gundappa Vishwanath 24, Mohinder Amarnath 5, Sandeep Patil 4 -- in the second Test against Pakistan at Karachi in December 1982, Kapil Dev slammed Sarfaraz Nawaz and Abdul Qadir around the park as he scored the fastest 50 by an Indian in 30 balls.
The Indian innings on Sunday, March 13, 2022, was not in the condition that it was in Karachi back in '82 when Rishabh Pant came into bat at the fall of Virat Kohli's wicket.
India were 139/4 and 23-year-old Pant (interestingly, Kapil was the same age when he scored that handsome half century in Karachi) didn't have a future Pakistan prime minister (Imran Khan's figures were 12.1-6-19-3 when the Indian innings folded up for 169), the fiery Sarfaraz Nawaz and the lethal leg-spinner Abdul Qadir at the bowling end.
The Sri Lankan bowling attack -- Suranga Lakmal, Lasith Embuldeniya, Vishwa Fernando, Dhananjaya de Silva and Praveen Jayawickrama -- were clearly not in the same league as Imran, Sarfaraz and Qadir, but that doesn't minimise what Pant achieved as he eclipsed the legendary Kapil Dev to score the fastest 50 by an Indian in only 28 balls with 7 fours and 2 sixes.
There is clearly no more destructive batter currently in world cricket and while he can drive us crazy by the erratic nature of his batting at times, throwing his wicket away (like he did in Bengaluru on Sunday), there is no better sight in the game these days when he is taking a bowling attack apart.
Please click on the images for six glimpses of Mr Pant's Sunday onslaught:
All photographs: BCCI
Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff.com
Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com
