KL Rahul vs Rishabh Pant: Who has better stats as a batsman at No. 5 in ODI cricket?

KL Rahul or Rishabh Pant – Who will be India’s No. 5 at the ICC Champions Trophy 2025?

By the end of 2022, Rishabh Pant had cemented his spot in India’s ODI team. That year, he played two high-quality ODI knocks against strong opposition in tough conditions – 85 against South Africa in Paarl and 125* against England in Manchester.

This was Pant’s maiden ODI century and the fact that it came in a series-deciding match made it even more memorable.

However, Pant suffered a horrible car accident in December that year and missed international cricket for a year and half.

In that period, India went back to KL Rahul to do the dual role of the wicket-keeper and No. 5 batsman. Rahul grabbed his opportunity with both hands with terrific performances in the Asia Cup 2023 and the World Cup 2023.

However, last year, during the ODIs in Sri Lanka, Pant made his comeback to the ODI side and a sense of uncertainty came forward regarding India’s keeper and No. 5 batter under new head coach Gautam Gambhir as Rahul was dropped after two failures and Pant got to play his ODI comeback game. Both the players failed to put up a score of note in that series, albeit all India batsmen bar Rohit Sharma failed on the spin-friendly Colombo surface.

Now, as India prepare for the ICC Champions Trophy 2025, they need to decide on this position. For that, they will get three ODIs against England.

Let us see the stats of both Rahul and Pant at No. 5 in ODI cricket:

KL Rahul:

In 30 ODI innings at the No. 5 position, Rahul has scored 1259 runs at an average of 57 and strike rate of 95 with two centuries and nine fifties.

Rahul had stellar 2023 in the middle-order role. In 2023, Rahul averaged 66, hitting two tons and seven fifties.

Rishabh Pant:

Pant has batted only seven innings at No. 5 in ODI cricket. In these knocks, he scored 310 runs at an average of 44 and strike rate of 136 with three fifties. This includes a score of 77 against England in Pune.

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