Sanjay Manjrekar believes Rishabh Pant will be the X-factor player for the Test match against England

India are slated to face England in the rescheduled fifth Test match on July 1st. The series' final match in 2021 was postponed owing to a covid-19 outbreak in the visitors' camp. The Indian team currently lead the five-match Test series. The team is currently preparing for the one-off match in a warmup game against Leicestershire.

While India has a lot of expectations from its senior players like Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and Jasprit Bumrah; Sanjay Manjrekar believes Rishabh Pant will be the X-factor player for India. The former Indian cricketer compared him to England's captain Ben Stokes. He also added that the 33-year-old can be a game-changer in different playing conditions.

"Rishabh Pant! I know Rohit Sharma is there at the top, there's Virat Kohli and other great batters. Pujara's defiance is there, there's some good bowling in Shami and Bumrah. They will be game changes with the ball. But in his very short career test career Rishabh Pant has notched up three great Test innings and in different conditions, different oppositions. So you're like Ben Stokes, if you've got to look at one player from India, you almost won India game against South Africa as well, with that 100 that he got, Pant is the man. If England's got Ben Stokes then India's got Rishabh Pant," Manjreakar told NDTV in an exclusive interview.

The wicket-keeper has not had the best time in white-ball cricket. He was also unproductive in the T20I series against South Africa recently. Notably, this was his first series as India's captain. Despite his struggles in T20I cricket, Manjrekar believes Pant can be productive in the longer format.

"So far, we've seen that Rishabh Pant has been a formidable Test player. While he's been putting together all the exceptional performances at the Test level, his white-ball batting has not been quite up there. So there's a disconnection almost between his performance in white-ball cricket versus red-ball cricket. This is a guy makes an impact playing Test cricket because he goes about things very differently," he said.