When the going gets tough, the tough get going. The maverick India batter-stumper Rishabh Pant lived up to the adage as he walked in to bat on day 2 of the Manchester Test with a fractured toe.AdvertisementChris Woakes’ toe-crushing yorker the day before had caught Pant off-guard as he tried to reverse-sweep and had to retire hurt.As the team required him to bat to get to a respectable total, Pant overcame the pain to register a gritty fifty.Accolades followed soon, with the likes of Sachin Tendulkar and Sanjay Manjrekar singing paeans to the stoicism shown by the 27-year-old southpaw.It is not the first instance of an injured cricketer putting nation first and overcoming the odds. The famous image of Anil Kumble bowling with a broken jaw from the 2002 series against the West Indies comes to mind. Struck by a Mervyn Dillon bouncer, the Bengaluru tweaker fractured his jaw but surprisingly came on to bowl and claim the prized scalp of Brian Lara.Mohinder Amarnath, the comeback man of Indian cricket, had also famously done so on a tour of the West Indies in 1983. In the Barbados Test, Malcolm Marshall’s bouncer hit him on the mouth and he retired hurt. With his team in a precarious state, Jimmy returned to the centre and scored 80 runs. In a rare case of someone from the losing side getting the honours, Amarnath received the Player of the Match award.VVS Laxman had also overcome acute back spasms in the Mohali Test against the mighty Australians in 2010 to see his team home. So had batter Hanuma Vihari against the same opposition in the Sydney Test in 2021.Vihari batted for more than two hours with a hamstring tear when his team needed him the most.
Despite pain, Rishabh Pant putting his best foot forward reminds one of Anil Kumble, Mohinder Amarnath
