Rishabh Pant uninstalled WhatsApp, kept mobile phone switched off to focus completely on cricket: Report

Team India keeper-batter Rishabh Pant created history by scoring hundreds in both innings of the first Test against England at Headingley in Leeds. Before that, he ended a wretched run of form in IPL 2025 with a scintillating 118* off 61 balls in Lucknow Super Giants' (LSG) last league match against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) at the Ekana Cricket Stadium.

Although the keeper-batter ended up on the wrong side of the result in both matches played in different formats, his return to form augurs well for the southpaw and Indian cricket as a whole. It's also a just reward for all the hard work that he has been putting in behind the scenes.

As per a report in The Times of India, in March this year Pant decided to make some major sacrifices to try and focus his complete attention on cricket. The TOI report claimed that the 27-year-old deleted his WhatsApp and switched off his mobile phone, turning it on only when he felt the need to communicate.

Speaking to the newspaper, India's former strength and conditioning coach Sohum Desai revealed that Pant put himself through rigorous training to keep himself in shape when he was benched during the Champions Trophy. Desai commented:

“He did the most intense sessions, day in and day out. He dragged me into the gym whenever he was free. He didn’t care about fatigue or workload programmes. All he said was he needed to keep working on himself. On the day of the final, he came to me with some kind of guilt in his mind and asked if he could take the day off. I said it was high time that he did.

“Pant has so much in reserve that he will be fine for at least a year without having to do anything extraordinary. That’s why you see him moving around so well despite scoring two hundreds and keeping wickets for so long in the Headingley Test,” Desai went on to add.

KL Rahul was preferred over Pant as the keeper-batter in the 2025 Champions Trophy, which India went on to win. The latter is no longer the first-choice stumper in the T20 format as well as Sanju Samson seems to have secured the spot.

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Rishabh Pant remains a massive asset for India in Test cricket

While Pant may have failed to grab his opportunities in limited-overs matches for India, he remains a key component of the Test team. The left-handed batter has played 44 matches so far and has scored 3,200 runs at an average of 44.44 and a strike rate of 74.03, with eight hundreds and 15 half-centuries.

The left-handed batter holds the record for having hit most tons (8) by an Indian keeper in Tests, surpassing MS Dhoni (6). He is only the second wicketkeeper-batter in history to slam hundreds in both innings of a Test match. Zimbabwe legend Andy Flower was the first cricketer to achieve the feat.