All the series around Pant have been bullshit for a long time. Every time he comes out to bat, there is a scuffle with him in the commentary box. What will he do now? Will he charge Jimmy Anderson? Will he reverse sweep her? Will he stand halfway down the pitch to face the bowling, toothpick in hand and cigar in his mouth?
Every dismissal has made it, not just for the circumstances when they were dismissed - and it really matters compound - way. He was beaten with extra bounce while going straight to short cover at Trent Bridge when India were nearly 40 runs behind in the first innings.
At Lord's, he threw his hands into a slash on a delivery from Mark Wood, who was in the back. He added 49 runs with Ravindra Jadeja, but after that India's lower order fell to just 34 runs. In the second, India, effectively 167 for 6, played an open-faced defensive game for the wicketkeeper.
At Headingley, he first tried to force one through cover - a fifth all out in 78 - and then chased down a wide straight third slip. India were in the process of being all out, falling from 215 to 3 to 278.
It has, in a sense, not been a win-win situation. Had he been dismissed with a less aggressive stroke, questions would have been asked about his ability in conditions favorable to the seamer. But because he is attacking, it is both his inadequacy and his carelessness in his circumstances.
So, when he went to The Oval on Sunday, it looked like there was going to be a release, though whether it would be a blast or a blast, no one could say. Pant faced some of the most batsman-friendly conditions of the series - so much so that Jasprit Bumrah would look like a batsman later - but also a tiring England attack with over a hundred overs already bowled, and Anderson And to Ollie Robinson. Specifically, a heavy chain workload. But the matter was not so simple. India were almost 200 but not far enough ahead, and Virat Kohli was out before he could actually set up.
Not for the first time in his career, Pant did something outside most expectations, if only because, in grinding to his slowest first-class fifty, even he was going somewhere he had never gone before. . Might be a bit heavy, but unlike Pant's innings, it is still a phenomenon.
It is not that he is incapable of protecting. There was a surface here on which he could rely on his defense. It was more about how long he could hold himself, which is too long. He did not play his first shot in the attack until the 33rd ball, faced with a pull-out by Craig Overton. He didn't hit his first boundary until his 54th ball, though that loft straight down the ground off Moeen Ali was well worth the wait. It was the second longest period in a Test innings without a boundary. Like a good boy, he didn't even try to reverse-sweep Anderson until he faced 89 balls and that's only because, by the time Shardul Thakur was dismissed, India's position was safe enough for him to try. But it got to such a point that England wanted Pant to do something silly, instead of waiting for him to do it.
Instead, other things came to the fore like his running, repeatedly stealing singles to mid-on and mid-off fielders. Early on, he converted one to long-on into a double so unexpectedly that it gifted him his only six, through four overthrows.
Over and over again he would get back into character, a sign that it was all, as batting coach Vikram Rathor later said, "a little out of character." In the same over he pulled the overton for no run, he let go of the last ball. Except that before he even got to the keeper's gloves, he played an air-slash, releasing a bit of all the tension from what he was doing.
"[It] was extremely important," Rathore said of the innings. "The position he went to bat, we needed a partnership there. So he took the responsibility. It was a bit out of character - he really, really approached the innings well, played with a lot of discipline .
"We all know that he has the potential (but) if he can bring this ability to the fore and play differently in different conditions, it will be really good for him and for the Indian team. would be really good.
"We keep talking and we keep discussing what his plans are and how he is going to approach the innings. Even today he understood the situation and what was required. To his credit, he played an innings Could - as I said - that was a bit out of character for him. That would give him a lot of confidence to move on."
Lack of confidence never seemed to be Pant's acute pain, but when he turned fifty he found himself clearly overwhelmed. A slowly ground-out Test half-century, which he might be thinking, isn't really all that cracked it.