Young wicketkeeper batsman Rishabh Pant is leading the Indian team in the ongoing T20I series against South Africa at home after India decided to rest some of their senior players.

India went into the series without the likes of Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah. KL Rahul was supposed to lead the side only to get injured and was ruled out of the series. Consequently, Rishabh was handed the role captaincy.

Rishabh's first outing as the captain didn't turn out well for him. India managed to put on a good score in the board with setting a target of 212 runs for the Proteas in the first innings at Delhi. This is the highest T20I total for India against South Africa. But David Miller and Russie Van der dussen denied the victory for the men in blue with some good hitting in the second innings.

Now a lot of questions are being raised on whether Rishabh was ready or not for the captaincy role. Frankly saying, it is quite early to judge him as a captain. One off day can't decide his captaincy future for sure.

Rishabh's Captaincy for Delhi Capital in IPL

Rishabh has already shown his leadership during his stint with the Delhi Capitals (DC) in Indian Premier League (IPL) that he is quite able to take his captaincy as well as batsman role to great extent.

He did a decent job in the recently concluded IPL as his side finished on top of the table from group stage. However, Delhi went on to lose qualifier and eliminator and was denied a spot in the finals.

Having said that, IPL and international cricket are whole different thing. The quality of cricket one expects in international cricket might exhaust more pressure to the young lad. Pant is one of the crucial member in the Indian squad and is looked as a long term candidate as far as all the three formats of the game are concerned for the Indian side. He accumulated 340 runs from 14 matches in the tournament.

Rishab The Captain should not overrule Rishabh The Batsman

In simpler terms, the role of captaincy should not affect his batting. Pant has had experience of over 5 years in international cricket. He should be capable now to maintain his state of mind and take both roles parallelly.

Many cricket pundits have put forward Hardik Pandya as a leader too. Yes, Hardik was brilliant with his leadership skills in recent IPL. But if India are to look at long term approach, Rishabh would obviously be a better choice.

Its just the matter of time that Rishabh gets used to lead the mighty Indian side in international level because he has shown his capability previously.