Rishabh Pant's Road to Recovery: From Horrific Crash to Cricket Comeback

When Rishabh Pant was rushed to a Mumbai hospital following a devastating car accident in December 2022, his immediate concern was his career. "Will I be able to play again?" he asked Dr. Dinshaw Pardiwala, the renowned orthopaedic surgeon who led his treatment.

Pant's ordeal began on December 30, 2022, while driving from Delhi to Roorkee. He lost control of his car, which collided with a divider and burst into flames, leaving him with severe injuries.

Dr. Pardiwala reflected on the incident, stating, "Rishabh Pant was extremely lucky to be alive." Passersby heroically pulled him from the wreckage.

The extent of Pant's injuries was significant. Dr. Pardiwala explained, "When he first came in, he had a dislocated right knee. He also had an injury to his right ankle, lots of other minor injuries all over. He had a lot of skin loss... the entire skin from the nape of the neck down to his knees was completely scraped off."

The recovery process was arduous, spanning 635 days and involving multiple surgeries, intensive physiotherapy, and unwavering resolve. This culminated in a remarkable comeback.

Dr. Pardiwala emphasized the severity of the accident: "To be in an accident like this, where the car actually overturns and blows up, the risk of death is extremely high." He further noted that Pant was fortunate to avoid losing blood supply to his right leg, a dangerous complication that could have resulted in amputation.

Dr. Pardiwala elaborated on the potential complications of the injury: "When your knee dislocates, and all the ligaments break, there's a high possibility of the nerve or the main blood vessel also being injured. If the blood vessel gets injured, you typically have about four to six hours to restore the blood supply. Otherwise, there's a risk of losing your limb."

While Pant's primary concern was his playing career, his mother's question to the doctor was more fundamental: "Is he ever going to be able to walk again?"

Dr. Pardiwala outlined the treatment plan: "We had a lengthy discussion about the fact that these are grievous injuries – we would need to reconstruct the entire knee. Once we reconstruct the entire knee, we’re going to have to then work through a whole process of letting it heal, letting it recover, then get back the basic functions – the range, the strength and the stability."

On January 6, 2023, Dr. Pardiwala performed a complex, four-hour surgery to reconstruct three ligaments and repair tendons and the meniscus in Pant's right knee.

The initial recovery phase was particularly challenging. "He lost a lot of skin, and so he couldn't really move his hands. They were completely swollen. He couldn't really move either of his hands initially," Dr. Pardiwala recalled.

Pant's recovery was gradual, eventually progressing to walking without crutches after four months. Despite the progress, Dr. Pardiwala admitted uncertainty about Pant's return to professional cricket.

Dr. Pardiwala explained his initial approach: "Typically, when we reconstruct these patients, they are happy just to get back to normal life. If they can walk and do some minimal amount of recreational sports, they’re happy. I said: ‘We can certainly make sure that he walks again. I’m going to try my best to make sure that we can get him back to playing again.’ We didn’t really want to offer him too much initially, but we did want to give him hope. So I said: ‘We’ll break it down into steps.’ Step one, of course, has to be the surgery."

He added, "When we discussed it just after the surgery, the way I told him is the fact you're alive, the fact that your limbs survived – that’s two miracles down. If we get you back to competitive cricket, that’s going to be a third miracle. Let’s just hope for everything, and then take it a step at a time."

Pant's determination was a driving force in his recovery. "His question then was: ‘OK, assuming that we do manage to get there, how long is it going to be?’ I said: ‘Probably looking at 18 months to get back to competitive cricket.’”

Spending most of 2023 at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore, Pant's recovery exceeded expectations.

"His whole aim was ‘Get me back to normalcy as fast as possible’. And we were trying to make sure that we were doing just the optimum, not too little, but not too much. His recovery was much faster than we had anticipated. He was like: ‘Nothing is too much.’ He pushed harder than normal people," Dr. Pardiwala concluded.

From a near-fatal car crash to his return to the Indian dressing room, Rishabh Pant's journey stands as a testament to his resilience and the power of hope.