'He is an integral part of India's line-up': Rahul Dravid comes out in Rishabh Pant's defence

Many experts and former cricketers were critical of Rishabh Pant's lack of form throughout India's T20 series vs South Africa but head coach Rahul Dravid has come out in his defence.

He said that sometimes it's very hard to judge it based on 2 or 3 games. 'Pant had a pretty good IPL. It might not have looked good on the averages but his strike rate was really good,' Dravid added.

The Southpaw from Delhi though didn't have the best of the IPL seasons according to his standards and scored 340 runs in 14 games without a single score of over 50 against his name. However, he has been scoring heavily in the previous editions of the cash-rich league and his average per season has never come down 30 since the 2018 IPL.

Interestingly, Pant was handed India's captaincy for the South Africa series and some experts believed that that might have affected his batting. In 5 T20I against the Proteas, the 24-year-old scored just 58 runs at a below-par average of 14.5. His strike rate of just over 105 was also questionable.

Moreover, Dinesh Karthik's remarkable comeback into the Indian T20 set-up prompted many experts including Dale Steyn to put their belief in DK rather than Pant. The veteran wicketkeeper-batter averaged 46 in 4 innings of the same series and scored at a destructive strike rate of almost 160.

Dravid however hopes that Pant gets back to his destructive best sooner rather than later as he remains an integral part of the team going forward.

After the series, Rahul said that personally, Pant would have liked to have scored a few more runs but it's not that concerning. For the management, he is certainly a very big part of our plans going ahead in the next few months.

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