Can Rishabh Pant make it to India's Test team?

After playing a crucial role in India's T20 World Cup win, the star batter is all set to make his return to the Test team for the upcoming Bangladesh series starting on 19 September 2024 in Chennai. During this home Test series, Rohit and Company will play two tests followed by three T20Is. 
It will be an important series to prepare for the upcoming Test series against New Zealand, which will be played before travelling to Australia for the Border Gavaskar Trophy.

Looking at India's busy Test schedule for the upcoming months, Rohit and the team will want to set their playing XI now for the ICC World Test Championship 2025. For this, the Indian players are asked to play domestic cricket. So they can show their prowess and it becomes easy for selectors to pick a player based on their performance in Duleep Trophy.

However, this time it's not going to be easy as Rishabh Pant has returned to the Indian team with a bang by being the highest-run-getter in the IPL from the Delhi-capitals franchise, followed by a brilliant performance in the ICC Men's T20 World Cup 2024. He will look to make it to India's middle-order as a wicket-keeper batsman.

Pant's 61 for India B in Duleep Trophy!

It won't be wrong to say that after performing incredibly well in limited-overs formats, everyone wants to see Pant in the red-ball format in the Duleep Trophy. In the match between India A and India B, when India B came to bat, they were 22 for 3 when Rishabh Pant and Sarfaraz Khan came out to bat and formed a crucial partnership of 72 to take the team to 94 runs. Pant stood like a pillar in the previous game and formed another partnership of 46 runs with all-rounder Nitish Reddy before getting out on the score of 61 runs by hitting 8 boundaries and 2 sixes with a strike rate of 129.

This innings was enough for the selectors and fans to show that the star-batter is the top contender in race for India's Test team after Dhruv Jurel and KL Rahul failed to score runs.

With this knock, Pant finally managed to make his first notable impact on return to red-ball cricket. He tackled Kuldeep Yadav's spin with typical flair as he cut and drove to bring up his 20th First Class fifty off just 37 balls. However, it will be interesting to see whether the selectors go with Dhruv Jurel, who has proved himself in the Test series against England or with the experience of Rishabh Pant, who is coming out from injury.