Even though Rishabh Pant’s bat is not working in T20 cricket, it is not easy to stop him in the Test format. After a poor IPL 2026 season, Pant regained his rhythm with the India-Afghanistan Test match. Pant batted brilliantly in the first innings of the test match against Afghanistan in Mullanpur. However, he missed completing his century and was out after scoring 81 runs. He was dismissed by Afghan captain Hashmatullah Shahidi, due to one of whose mistakes Pant was able to stay at the crease for so long.
All this drama happened in the first session of the second day of the Mullanpur Test match, at the center of which were Rishabh Pant and Hashmatullah Shahidi. Pant had completed his half-century on the first day of the match and on the second day he came out to increase the score of 50 runs. But in the fourth over of the day itself, an appeal for catch was made against him. This appeal of Azmatullah Omarzai was rejected by the umpire, while captain Shahidi also did not take DRS on it. After some time, replays showed that the ball had touched Pant’s bat and he was out.
Not only did the umpire give a wrong decision, captain Shahidi himself made a mistake by not taking a review. In such a situation, this mistake started costing Afghanistan heavily as Pant started moving towards his century and it was proving difficult for the team to dismiss him. In such a situation, after some time Shahidi herself took command of the bowling and this move worked. After the first three balls of Shahidi’s over were empty, Pant played a shot high in the air on the fourth and for this a fielder had already been deployed near the boundary. Long off fielder Omarzai came forward and took this catch with ease.
Shahidi gave a big success to his team by stopping Pant from scoring a century and he himself took a sigh of relief as he had compensated for his mistake. But it is not just that. This success was very special for Shahidi because this was the off-spinner’s first wicket in Test cricket. Before this wicket, he had bowled 37 overs in his 12 Test match career but he had never got success. But this time he was successful in taking the first kill. This is his first international wicket in all three formats combined.
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