Rishabh Pant was named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year for 2025. Kaushik Rangarajan’s piece on Pant originally appeared in the 2026 edition of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack.
The Five Cricketers of the Year represent a tradition that dates back to 1889, making this the oldest individual award in cricket. The Five are picked by the editor, and the selection is based, primarily but not exclusively, on excellence in and/or influence on the previous English season. No one can be chosen more than once.
“It feels good, boss… Finally!” The press-conference room at Headingley erupted in laughter. About to play his 44th Test, Rishabh Pant – newly appointed as India’s vice-captain – was responding to a question about being called a “senior”. How would it change this most maverick of cricketers? The answer was provided by the second ball he faced: charging at Ben Stokes, he drilled him back over his head for four. Like the journalists two days earlier, the England captain saw the funny side.
So much had changed for Pant in the previous year: a recovery from a life-threatening car crash, a T20 World Cup winner’s medal, a groundbreaking £2.5m bid at the IPL auction, a leadership role. And yet – gloriously, defiantly – so little had changed.
When he played a one-handed slog off Shoaib Bashir to reach his hundred, it was the third time he had done so with a six, and he celebrated with a somersault. Neither Virat Kohli nor Sunil Gavaskar had scored three Test centuries in England. Two days later, Pant pushed his count to four, joining Alec Stewart and Matt Prior on most Test hundreds in England by wicketkeepers. Gavaskar was now on the team balcony, gesturing for another somersault. Pant, presumably tired from trying to scoop England’s quicks, opted instead for a bow. It is not in his DNA to do the expected. And it was left to KL Rahul to rationalise those twin tons: “He is a unique player, and you just let them be. He obviously has a method to his batting which none of us understands, but it seems to work.”
Before his tour was cut short by a foot injury in Manchester, Pant scored 479 runs from seven innings at 68, and hit 17 sixes. But his summer will be remembered as much for the imagery as the arithmetic. In Birmingham, he was tasked with throwing the bat to set up a declaration, and took it literally, flaying 65 before he was caught at long-off as his bat flew to mid-wicket. At Lord’s, he struggled with his grip for a different reason. A hand injury had forced him off the field and, when India began their reply, he was in the outdoor nets, trying to force his left index finger into a glove. He urged the support staff not to hold back, because Jofra Archer wouldn’t. And when he finally walked out, still grimacing, he made a plucky 74.
In Manchester, there was more drama. On the opening day, he broke his foot trying to reverse-sweep Chris Woakes. Yet shortly before 12.30 next day, barely an hour after he was spotted on crutches and in a moon boot, he hobbled down the steps to resume his innings, adding 17 to his overnight 37, and drawing level with Virender Sehwag’s Indian-record 90 Test sixes by depositing Archer over mid-wicket. “The character and foundation of this team will be built on what Rishabh did,” said head coach Gautam Gambhir.
RISHABH RAJENDRA PANT was born on October 4, 1997, in Roorkee, a small town in Uttarakhand with little cricketing pedigree. At 12, he arrived in Delhi with a ravenous appetite for the game, and a tiny room to call home. His mother, Saroj, stayed with him during the summer camp at Sonnet Cricket Academy, but cricket wasn’t going to support their middle-class family, and she returned to the school she managed, leaving her son alone with his dream.
Walk past the Durgabai Deshmukh South Campus metro station in South Delhi, and you may miss the narrow entrance to the academy. Inside, though, coach Tarak Sinha spotted Pant instantly. In his first tournament, he hit three centuries in four matches, including 155 off 74 balls, earning a bat he used until it broke. When practice ended and the other boys left, Pant would visit the home of assistant coach Davendra Sharma, and spend evenings discussing the game. Mrs Sharma’s food and warmth filled the parental void.
Delhi cricket has often chewed up those who arrive unprepared. Once, when Pant missed practice with fever, Sinha and Sharma found him in a filthy rented room in nearby Palam. They packed his bags, moved him somewhere nicer, and arranged for meals at a local temple. He would train from seven until seven, going home only to eat and sleep.
In his first full Ranji Trophy season, the first ball Pant faced from off-spinner Gokul Sharma kept low and brushed the underedge. The next was launched towards the sight-screen for six. “Matter nahi karta last ball mein hua kya hai,” he said (“It doesn’t matter what happened the ball before”). That season, he hit 49 sixes, and it is a philosophy he still swears by. In 2018, on debut at Trent Bridge, he became the first Indian to get off the mark in Test cricket with a six, launching Adil Rashid down the ground. Three weeks later at The Oval, he scored 114. After that, he stood at the centre of India’s modern overseas epics: an unbeaten 159 at Sydney to seal a series win in Australia in 2018/19, then 97 there two years later, followed by an unbeaten 89 at the Gabba. At Cape Town in January 2022, he made an absurd second-innings hundred; the next-highest score was 29.
The six-hitting came naturally, a skill shaped by watching Yuvraj Singh as a child. “When Yuvi pa batted and hit sixes, it looked like he wasn’t even trying, just timing it,” says Pant. “I’d see myself doing the same thing in the mirror and think: ‘If Yuvraj can hit sixes like that, I can too.’”
There were hurdles. In April 2017, his father, Rajendra, died while Pant was preparing for an IPL match in Bengaluru. He rushed home, performed the last rites, and two days later scored 57, dedicating it to his memory. In his third year in international cricket, he was taunted for a wicketkeeping mistake by fans at Mohali who felt he was not ready to replace MS Dhoni. Then, in the early hours of December 30, 2022, he suffered a car accident on the Delhi-Dehradun highway: ligament tears in his right knee, a head injury, fractures.
The recovery was long, agonising and uncertain. Many feared for his future. But Pant had spent his childhood learning to absorb pain – physical and emotional – and he spent 15 months relearning how to walk, keep and bat. He returned for the 2024 IPL, leaner and fitter, his attacking instinct undimmed. By the end of 2025, with Shubman Gill ruled out against South Africa at Guwahati, Pant became India’s 38th Test captain. The kid who once hit sixes in the mirror had stepped into the frame.
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