Former India all-rounder Ravichandran Ashwin on Friday compared wicket-keeper Rishabh Pant at par with England’s Joe Root and Australia’s Steve Smith as the best batters in the last seven years, when batting has become “significantly difficult and averages have decreased.”

“We must realise that Rishabh Pant rarely gets out playing defence. He’s got one of the best defences in world cricket. Defence has become a challenging aspect, he has the best defence with a soft hand. I will change my name if someone can show me Pant getting out while defending 10 times,” Ashwin said on his YouTube channel.
“I have bowled to him a lot in the nets, he’s not gotten out, he doesn’t get an edge, he doesn’t get LBW, he has the best defence. I have tried telling him. One opinion about Rishabh was that he plays a lot of shots, he has to fight it out in Test cricket.

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“Test cricket is played according to the situation. In the last seven years, batting has become significantly difficult, from 2018 to 2025. But, in the WTC cycle, batting averages have decreased. Joe Root is in his own zone. Of course, Williamson… Smith has rediscovered again. What we realised is, Rishabh Pant has played in these times,” he added.

The 38-year-old Ashwin, who announced his retirement in the middle of the recently-concluded Border-Gavaskar series, suggested that Pant needs to find a balance between offence and defence to score more consistently, as the left-hander has every shot in the book and can change the course of the match in a matter of overs.

“We have to tell him properly what he has to do if he has to bat solidly or bat with intent. He hasn’t scored a lot of runs, but he didn’t play like someone without runs. He has a lot of time on his hands. Rishabh Pant is yet to realise his fullest potential,” Ashwin said.

“He has all the shots — reverse sweep, slog sweep, everything — but the problem is that all these shots are high-risk shots. With his defence, he will surely score runs every game if he faces 200 balls. The point is finding that middle game. If he combines all of it, he will score 100 runs every game. He has to find that middle game,” the veteran off-spinner added.

Pant, who was criticised for poor shot selection in both innings of the Melbourne Test, came up with contrasting knocks in the two innings of the SCG Test, as his 98-ball 40 in the first was followed by 33-ball 61 in the second essay.

However, Ashwin was not surprised by the keeper’s tenacious innings in the first essay. “I have always grown up hearing that you have fought it out. In Sydney, he played two different knocks in one single game. He got hit everywhere and scored a 40, it will be the least spoken innings of Rishabh Pant. It is very unfair.”

“In the second innings, he scored a swashbuckling fifty, earning him a lot of praise. Everyone forgot that first innings and praised him for the second knock,” Ashwin pointed out.