Rishabh Pant has been criticised for his poor shot selection against Marco Jansen, but the South African pacer believes that had Pant executed the stroke correctly, the outcome might have been very different.
Pant charged down the track when India were struggling at 102 for 4. Jansen bowled a short-of-length delivery that climbed sharply, taking the edge and landing safely in the wicketkeeper’s gloves.
Asked if Pant’s shot surprised him, Jansen said, “Things won’t always go your way. On another day, Rishabh Pant might have sent that ball fifty rows back over my head, and we would be having a very different conversation.” He emphasised that the moment was simply about execution.
Jansen realised early in India’s first innings that there was neither swing in the air nor movement off the surface. This forced him to rely on bouncers - an approach that paid off handsomely on the third day.
After scoring a superb 93 off 91 balls to help South Africa reach 489 on day two, Jansen starred with the ball as well, taking 6 for 48 to skittle India out for just 201. Except for Kuldeep Yadav, all his other five wickets came off short-pitched deliveries - an example of effective Plan B bowling on an unresponsive pitch.
“To be honest, the ball wasn’t nipping like it was in Kolkata, so we had to figure out another plan,” Jansen explained. “When I got my first wicket—Dhruv Jurel—with a bouncer, we thought, ‘Okay, cool, let’s see how long this works.’ And it just did.”
While Kuldeep Yadav described the Barsapara pitch as a “road,” Jansen called it a “sporting wicket.”
“It’s a good wicket to bat on. There’s decent pace and bounce. If you handle the short ball well, you’ll score runs, and if you bowl well, you’ll get wickets.”
Once the ball softened, Jansen was taken out of the attack, returning only with the second new ball, which brought him his final two wickets.
“After my earlier spell, the ball felt a bit soft. It wasn’t getting up and lacked that zip. Once we took the new ball, the bounce returned and it came on nicely, so we tried to use that to our advantage.”
A subtle but important point he highlighted was how the training pitches in Guwahati closely resembled the match surface—something players rarely experience.
“The training facilities were very similar to the match wicket, which really helps. You get a sense of how the pitch might play and can prepare accordingly.”
