Amid Chatter Over Lord's Pitch, Pant Gives Blunt Verdict: "Don't Want To..."

There has been a lot of chatter around the pitch at Lord's ahead of the third Test encounter between India and England. In the first two Test matches, the pitches were quite batting-friendly and it resulted in huge totals for both teams. However, the pictures of the Lord's pitch caused a stir among the fans as it looked much greener than the other surfaces. As a result, there were reports that England will create a pitch that will assist pacers - a deviation from their previous plan. Indian cricket team vice-captain Rishabh Pant said that the visitors are not thinking about the pitch and are instead concentrating on their cricket.

"See, as a team, generally, what we plan is to play according to the conditions given to us. We don't want to think about what the opposition is thinking—whether they are changing their plans or not. Whatever they're doing, we'll do our best and do better from there. Simple," said Pant.

"The discussion was that England will give us better wickets because the kind of cricket that they play. So for us, the mantra was to get 20 wickets on these batting-friendly wickets. That was already planned. Eventually, our batters have to step up because we don't have two of our senior players too. Like I said, it's an opportunity to step up and people are slowly doing that. Eventually, we might do even better as a team," he added.

Pant, ahead of the third test against England at the Home of Cricket, Lord's, spoke about what makes veteran seamer Jasprit Bumrah so special.

Bumrah is likely to replace Prasidh Krishna in the Indian playing 11 as India and England are all set to clash in the third Test of the five-match Anderson-Tendulkar Trophy series, starting July 10.

While speaking in pre-match press conference, Rishabh Pant said, "I think everything (What makes Bumrah special). How accurate he is, the way his mind works, I think he is just an amazing man. I think it's more difficult for the wicket-keeper behind the wicket than for a batsman, I guess. Especially in England (the movement he gets)."

(With ANI inputs)

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