I take my hat off to the way: Paul Collingwood praises Rishabh Pant for his quick-fire hundred

The England team's assistant coach Paul Collingwood has lavished praise on the Indian wicket-keeper Rishabh Pant for his whirlwind knock of 146 off 111 balls in the 5th Test at Edgbaston.

Coming at a precarious situation, with India at 64/3, Pant used his natural game to counter attack the opposition bowlers and forced them to opt for a defensive approach. In this pursuit, the 24-year-old completed his century off 89 balls, which is now the quickest century by the Indian wicket-keeper in the red-ball format. 

On the other end, he got strong support from the all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja as well, which propelled India to 338/7 at end of Day 1. 

Collingwood reckoned that it is a belter of a surface, but England would look to keep India under 370

"Today was a great day. I don't feel as if our backs were against the wall for too long. I think the batters should be excited about batting on that wicket. It will be a great result if we keep them down to 360, 370," Collingwood said after Day 1.

The former English cricketer praised Pant for his world-class innings against the quality pace attack. 

"I take my hat off to the way that Pant played. When you play against world-class players, they can do world-class things. And today he had his day."

The 46-year-old stated that Pant used the same attacking strategy of Brendon McCullum, which is also called 'Bazball' in the recent few days after the England-New Zealand series. 

"Pant came out to play a bit of Bazball, as everyone keeps calling it," said Collingwood. 

Collingwood reckoned that the bowlers were able to use the overcast condition in their favour to pick up early wickets. However, he admitted as the ball gets softer from the second session, it's hard to take wickets, and hailed the strokeplay of Jadeja and Pant. 

"When you have a bit of moisture in the pitch early on, you have a chance to take early wickets, which is what we did. 

We're going against the grain of much of the cricket that's been played over the last 100 years … We are trying to play as positive as possible, and play entertaining cricket. Ben [Stokes] is not going to take a backwards step."

"I wouldn't necessarily say anything went wrong. What we've found in the three games against New Zealand is that once the ball goes quite soft after 30 or 40 overs it can be very difficult to take wickets … we were unable to get the ball to do anything off the straight, and there was some amazing strokeplay," Collingwood added.