Rishabh Pant is at the crease and as always with the lively wicket-keeper, things are happening. Mitch Starc has rapped him on the pad and unwisely convinced Pat Cummins to review - that was well down leg and too high to hit the stumps.
In any case, the fact that Pant is out there at all is incredible, as told to Dan Brettig recently by the surgeon who helped save his career.
”I need to get out, I need to get out.” Rishabh Pant cried out from under his overturned car on the highway near the northern Indian city of Dehradun on December 30, 2022.
Conscious after a high-speed crash and trapped in the passenger cabin, he could feel and see his knee bent at a sickening 90-degree angle.
But Rishabh could also smell the unmistakable whiff of petrol from the smoking hulk of the vehicle. As so many Bollywood films had shown him, a car in this position had every chance of blowing up.
Loading
As he later related to doctor Dinshaw Pardiwala, the expert surgeon who would repair his shattered knee, Rishabh called over a couple of bystanders and pleaded for them to drag him out of the car.
It was an excruciating escape that peeled clumps of skin from his back, buttocks and legs, through the shattered glass of the car window.
“That was a good decision,” Dinshaw said, “because within about two minutes of that, the car did blow up, and that basically saved his life. It was absolutely extraordinary.”
Read the full story of Pant’s remarkable survival and recovery here.