The gap is 80 strike rate points. Rishabh Pant sits at 132.43 from seven innings this season. Rajat Patidar is at 212.96. Shreyas Iyer is at 182.45. Those numbers don’t just reflect different levels of form. They represent three completely different approaches to captain-batting arriving in the same tournament at the same time. Pant sees those benchmarks every match day. He feels the responsibility to close that gap. That instinct is understandable. It is also, according to both Saba Karim and Dale Steyn, the exact thing dismantling his season delivery by delivery.

 

Karim Confirms Pant Has No Blueprint

 

Saba Karim’s assessment after the Rajasthan Royals’ defeat was the sharpest observation of the night. Pant hasn’t found his white-ball template yet. Not just this season. Across a decade of domestic and IPL cricket since 2015-16, the method still isn’t there.

 

That’s a significant statement about a player in his tenth professional year. But the evidence supports it. A batter with a fixed template arrives at the crease already knowing their risk threshold, their scoring zones, and when to absorb versus when to accelerate. Pant has shown glimpses of all three across his career. He’s never locked them into a repeatable system. Wednesday’s three-ball duck on a surface demanding patience wasn’t a failure of talent. It was a batter still solving the same problem he’s been solving since his debut.

 

Steyn Spots the Real Confusion

 

Dale Steyn’s diagnosis was more specific than the scorecard. Pant is playing more than one game in his head simultaneously. His own instinctive game on one side. The aggressive captain template on the other hand. That internal negotiation happens before a ball is bowled, and it’s costing him the clarity that T20 batting at this level demands.

 

Justin Langer acknowledged the same tension without using Steyn’s words. Pant wants freedom. He’s instinctive by nature. But instinct without a structure behind it becomes reactive rather than decisive, and reactive batting on a tough pitch against Rajasthan produces exactly the dismissal that ended his evening in three deliveries. Faf du Plessis made the point directly: Wednesday needed a calm head, not an attempt to match someone else’s strike rate.

 

IPL 2026 Captains Leave Pant Behind

 

IPL 2026 has made aggressive captaincy the visible standard, and Pant is watching it from outside the conversation. Iyer’s 208 runs at 182.45 and Patidar’s 230 at 212.96 have created a benchmark that feels impossible to ignore when you’re the third captain in that comparison, sitting 80 points behind both of them.

 

Du Plessis identified exactly how that pressure works. The captain sets the tone. Pant sees Patidar and Iyer demonstrating what aggressive captain-batting looks like and feels the responsibility to follow. The problem is that mirroring another batter’s template rather than trusting your own produces the worst of both approaches. Pant gets neither the freedom of his instinctive game nor the clarity of a defined aggressive method. He gets a three-ball duck on a surface where patience would have been enough.

 

His 2018 Numbers Seem Far Away

 

Pant’s 2018 IPL campaign produced 684 runs at 173.60. His 2017 season delivered 366 at 165.61. Those numbers came from a batter fully committed to his own instinctive method without the weight of captaincy, external benchmarks, or a team losing five of seven matches pressing down on every decision.

 

This season’s 147 runs at 132.43 track almost exactly with his difficult spell of 269 runs in 14 innings at 133.17 last season. LSG doesn’t need Pant to discover something new. They need him to stop carrying Patidar’s strike rate and Iyer’s template into the crease and trust the version of himself that those 2018 numbers belonged to.

 

  • Can Pant find his own white-ball template in time to save LSG’s season, or has the pressure of copying Iyer and Patidar already done too much damage to fix before the playoffs? Drop your pick in the comments and follow for IPL 2026 updates.

 

FAQs

 

Q1: What is Rishabh Pant’s biggest problem in IPL 2026?

 

He has no clear batting template, leaving him torn between his natural instincts and the aggressive captain standards set by Iyer and Patidar.

 

Q2: What did Dale Steyn say about Pant?

 

Steyn said Pant is playing more than one game in his head, trying to be himself while also copying what Iyer and Patidar are doing.

 

Q3: How do Pant’s IPL 2026 stats compare to his peak?

 

His current 147 runs at SR 132.43 are far below his 2018 peak of 684 runs at SR 173.60.

 

Q4: What does LSG need from Pant immediately?

 

Commitment to his own instinctive game rather than chasing benchmarks set by other captains, especially on difficult surfaces.

 

Disclaimer: This blog post reflects the author’s personal insights and analysis. Readers are encouraged to consider the perspectives shared and draw their own conclusions.