NEW DELHI: As Saturday marked one year of Rishabh Pant‘s near-fatal car accident, his India and Delhi Capitals teammate Axar Patel recalled the chilling moment when he first got to know about the mishap.
Last year, Pant was involved in a horrific car accident as he escaped from his burning car after it hit a divider on the Delhi-Roorkee highway.
Pant got seriously injured but received timely help from the people at the site of the accident.
In a video posted by Pant’s IPL franchise Delhi Capitals, Axar recalled the moment when he learned about the accident as the first thoughts in his mind came ‘ye bhai gaya’.
“Subah 7 ya 8 baje mere phone pe ring baji. Pratima di ka phone aya. Pratima di ne mujhe pucha ki ‘teri Rishabh se kab baat hui thi last?’ Mene bola ‘nahi, kal karne wala tha lekin kal nahi ki mene’. ‘Are uski mummy ka number ho toh mereko send kar, uska accident ho gaya hai’. Matlab pehla thought mereko aaya ki ye bhai gaya (Early morning I got a call from sister Pratima. She asked me when did I talk to Rishabh Pant last? I told her that I was about to talk to him last day but I did not. Pratima said that she needed Pant’s mother’s contact number as the player has met with an accident. At the first time, I thought he is gone),” said Axar in the video.

After his accident, Pant has had an operation and is going through rehab at the National Cricket Academy. The star batter is most likely to feature in the 2024 edition of the IPL.
In a recent video posted by IPL ahead of the December 19 auction, Pant said he is ‘lucky to be alive’ after the accident.
“The kind of accident I had, I am lucky to be alive. The first part of recovery was so challenging with lots of pain but now recovery is going well,” Pant said in the video.
“More from a physical point of view because in the starting there was a lot of pain to be endured. But just looking forward to the journey till now. I think it’s been going really well from a recovery point of view.

“I felt like I couldn’t face people and all, and I felt like I had to do something which gives me confidence and I wanted to support my team at the same time because I’ve been playing for them. I love my team all the way, so I wanted to show my support even in the worst times. So that was the idea and I think it’s part of the recovery process,” Pant said.
The 2024 edition of the IPL is slated to start from March 22 and will go on till May end, multiple reports have suggested.
The final dates of the tournament will be announced once the dates for 2024 general elections are finalised by the Election Commission of India.