Rishabh Pant

A match-turning, swashbuckling batter-keeper in the Adam Gilchrist mould, Rishabh Pant has had a starring role in more than a handful of India's biggest Test matches in his first few years in the team.

His first Test century came in his third match, on the 2018 tour of England, when he made 114 from No. 7 when up against a target of 464 that he made look almost gettable at points when he was at the crease. Early the following year he produced 159 off 189 balls in a giant India total in Sydney, which sealed their first series in Australia. An encore followed early in 2021, when he made a brisk 97 at the SCG, helping wrest a draw off Starc, Cummins, Lyon and Hazlewood after India were staring down the barrel.

Pant's finest batting hour came in the classic that followed in Brisbane: an unbeaten 89 to steer a veritable India third XI home in a tall chase, and to their second series win down under in two visits. In Cape Town at the start of 2022, he made an almost ludicrous 100 off 139 in an India total where the next highest score was 29. And later that year, he set India up with a rapid 146 in the first innings of the postponed last Test of their tour of England from 2021 - only for England to outgun them in a berserker fourth-innings chase.

It is a mark of Pant's no-fear, no-brakes batting that in his first four years in the game, he had as many scores between 90 and 100 in Tests as he did hundreds. It is the only way he has known: a year after making his Ranji Trophy debut at 18 in 2015, Pant scored a triple-hundred against Maharashtra, followed by two blistering centuries in a game against Jharkhand a month on - one of them ending in 135 off 67 balls.

With Test stats like his, Pant's numbers in T20 - close to 3000 runs over seven seasons for Delhi Capitals, at a strike rate of 148 - don't seem especially remarkable, but he has been a force for the Delhi side, their all-time top-scorer, and was appointed captain in 2021. He was bought at auction by the franchise the day he made a hundred in the 2016 Under-19 World Cup that took India into the semi-finals of that tournament.