Questioning India's batting line-up: Should Rohit Sharma have batted at No. 5 instead of Rishabh Pant?

Former batting coach Sanjay Bangar has raised concerns about India's batting line-up and recommended that Rishabh Pant should bat at number 6 for the team. Bangar made this suggestion following Pant's recent struggles with the bat, as he was dismissed early for just 9 runs in the first innings of the Brisbane Test. This marked the fifth consecutive failure for Pant in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy series.

Riding on 2020-21 heroics, Pant arrived in Australia with a big reputation, but he has not been able to make any impact with the bat so far in the ongoing series.

Bangar asserted that he won't go into Pant's form much and said the top order should take more responsibility and set a platform for him.

"In the last two innings, with the pink ball as well, he got good balls very early on in his innings. You get such balls for sure. So I wouldn't try to analyze too much if I had been there. However, the top order will have to take slightly more responsibility," Bangar told Star Sports.

Bangar further said that skipper Rohit Sharma should have come at number 5 when India started losing quick wickets at the top as Pant has the ability to make the same impact at number 6.

"Also if three wickets had fallen at such a stage, could Rohit Sharma have come at No. 5 from No. 6? That question definitely comes to my mind because if he has been opening the batting and there was such a situation in the match, could that change have happened? Rishabh Pant can leave his impact at No. 6 also," Bangar added.

During the same discussion, Deep Dasgupta claimed that Pant got out on good deliveries against a new ball which is not a strong suit for the middle-order batters.

"They were all good balls. There is a reason why he is a No. 5 batter. He is not an opener or a No. 3 but a No. 5. When you see his dismissals outside the off-stump, you should see when he came to bat. The ball was new here and went away after pitching," he replied.

The former wicketkeeper batter suggested that it would be unfair to be too critical of Pant as he was exposed early in the innings after another top-order failure.

"It's not that he played a bad shot. He got out while defending. We could talk about the hard hands and all, but a No. 5 batter has hard hands, and that is why he is a middle-order batter. Very few middle-order batters, especially stroke players, don't have hard hands. You don't want to be too critical about it," Dasgupta observed.