Rishabh Pant Creates Unwanted Record During IND v SA 5th T20I

Rishabh Pant lost the toss for the fifth time in a row against South Africa.

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The five-match T20I series between India and South Africa reached its deciding game in the fifth T20I. India came back into the series after being 0-2 down to 2-2 in the fourth T20I under the captaincy of Rishabh Pant. 

Pant was made the captain of the Indian team for this series after KL Rahul got ruled out due to injury on the eve of the first T20I at Delhi. Although his captaincy stint began with two consecutive losses, India did make a solid comeback to level the series. 

Even though Pant has looked good in his maiden series as an Indian captain, one thing he might look want to change is his luck in the tosses. In all the five games, Pant lost the toss. At first, it looked like Temba Bavuma was making the difference but even Keshav Maharaj called the right side of the coin to win the toss in the fifth T20I.

After losing the toss fifth time in the series, Pant became the first captain to lose five or more tosses in a bilateral series. While captains have lost four in a series but none of them managed to lose five. 

Rishabh Pant becomes the first ever captain to lose 5 or more tosses in a bilateral T20I (men/women) series.

There were 19 previous instances of losing 4 tosses in a bilateral T20I series - 10 in men's T20Is and 9 in women's T20Is.#INDvSA

— Rhitankar Bandyopadhyay (@rhitankar8616) June 19, 2022

Pant was jokingly asked about him losing five tosses in a row for which the Indian captain replied, "I have tried practicing but it is not working." 

Another interesting and consistent thing that India did during this series (which is probably a positive thing) is that they didn't change the playing XI in any game. 

India Playing XI - Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ishan Kishan, Shreyas Iyer, Rishabh Pant (capt & wk), Hardik Pandya, Dinesh Karthik, Axar Patel, Harshal Patel, Avesh Khan, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Yuzvendra Chahal