IPL 2024: Rishabh Pant won't find things easy in IPL, reckons Sunil Gavaskar

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Rishabh Pant is set to lead Delhi Capitals in the IPL 2024 but he will have to sweat it out after the long injury lay-off, reckons former India player Sunil Gavaskar.

The Indian player will find it "very difficult" to be at his fluent best at the beginning of the IPL but Gavaskar expects that his knees will react better once he starts batting regularly and gets game time under his belt.

Pant is making a return to cricket for the first time since he had a horrific car accident in December 2022. Pant underwent multiple surgeries after that and missed all the cricket in the last 14 months, but he is finally poised to make a return.

But Gavaskar says it won't be easy for Pant to start from where he left off in the early stages of the IPL.

"It'll be very difficult. But the good thing is he (Pant) has played some cricket. So he has got some practice. To get fluency in batting is a little tough," Gavaskar told 'Star Sports'.

He then explained his point of view. "When you talk of a knee injury, the pivoting that takes place. Wicket-keeping is difficult as well, but even in batting, the knee is quite important. So, maybe, in the beginning, we won't see the real Rishabh Pant that we are used to," he said.

Gavaskar is also interested in how Shubman Gill's maiden captaincy stint turns out. "That is going to be the most important thing: the way he can handle the captaincy. Will it affect and impact his batting? And the second thing is there is a commonality in our initials; both of us are SG's, and if we go even further, my initials are SMG, and he has Shubh-Man Gill in his name."

(with PTI inputs)