Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh) [India], May 28 : Lucknow Super Giants captain Rishabh Pant wants to switch off for a few days, stop thinking about cricket and then prepare for the upcoming England series in a good frame of mind.
With a six-run defeat against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, Lucknow's topsy-turvy IPL 2025 campaign ended on a bitter note in their home den. Churning out five victories out of their eight fixtures and then standing with a solitary win in the last six fixtures ruled them out of the race for the playoffs.
On a personal level, Pant found his lost mojo just a few weeks before India embarks on a gruelling tour of five Tests in England. The explosive southpaw will serve as Shubman Gill's deputy in the five high-stakes Tests that could make or break India's World Test Championship 2025-2027 final hopes.
With the series set to kick off on June 20 at Headingley, Pant revealed his plan before putting in the hard yards for a jam-packed Test summer and said after the match, "There'll be a lot of areas where we'll be talking and looking to improve ourselves, but the season is just ending, I don't know where the talk is going to go. But at the same time, I just want to switch off for a few days, not think about cricket and then the England series is coming up, and I'm just preparing for that in a good frame of mind."
Before putting up a show and unleashing his best in the ongoing tournament with a swashbuckling 118* from 61 deliveries, Pant was labouring for runs with his scratchy performances. The misfiring southpaw had mustered up just 151 runs at a scrappy average of 13.72 while barely maintaining a strike rate of 100.
Pant felt that runs were somewhere around the corner, but things just didn't go his way. He implemented what all experienced players do, trying to make it as big as possible after getting off to a desired start.
"I was feeling well with each and every match, but sometimes it just doesn't come off. Today, I made sure that if I am starting well, I should make a big one. Like all experienced players do, learning from the best. Whenever you get a start, try to make it as big as possible," he said.
"I was trying to play the field, and how they were going to bowl was something I kept in mind. Playing through the line, looking for the areas and the gaps, and keeping it very simple. Played every ball with the same intensity and kept on playing with the same intensity throughout the innings," he added.
Coming to the fixture, RCB gunned down the third-highest chase in the tournament's history, courtesy of stand-in captian Jitesh Sharma's rollicking 85*, along with valuable contribtutions chipped in by Virat Kohli (54), Mayank Agarwal (41*) and Phil Salt (30).
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