Rishabh Pant

Rishabh Pant's career is a story of precocious audacity colliding with brutal circumstance. A teenage prodigy for Delhi, he was fast-tracked into the national setup and made his Test debut in England in 2018. The real fireworks came in Australia: a swashbuckling 159 not out at Sydney in the 2018-19 series, then an unbeaten 89 at Brisbane in January 2021 to seal one of India's greatest away wins.

Pant became India's first-choice Test wicketkeeper on the strength of that fearlessness. His flamboyant strokeplay, often derided as reckless, kept producing match-winning innings, including a century at Edgbaston in 2022. Then, in December 2022, a near-fatal car crash left him with multiple serious injuries and the cricketing world unsure whether he would play again.

He defied the odds, returning to international cricket at the 2024 T20 World Cup, which India won, and then to Tests, where he made 109 against Bangladesh in Chennai and 99 against New Zealand in Bengaluru. In England in 2025 he scored twin hundreds in the Leeds Test and later batted with a fractured foot in Manchester, by which time he was India's Test vice-captain. In the IPL, Lucknow Super Giants made him the most expensive signing in the league's history in 2025 and handed him the captaincy.

Pant represents a new era for Indian keepers: fearless, unorthodox and a match-winner with wins in Australia, England and at home already behind him.