India, June 21 -- The surprise element in Rishabh Pant's batting is long gone, but how he still manages to leave the opposition gobsmacked will probably end up as a research thesis one day. Ben Stokes probably felt he had seen everything and so when Pant skipped down the pitch to smack him over his head for four on Friday, he burst out laughing.

Pant was straight-faced though. Stokes followed it up with some friendly banter but Pant remained unresponsive, focused on gardening his end of the pitch. This was unprecedented. The England skipper would have straightaway known it wasn't a good sign that Pant wasn't joining in on the banter.

This was Pant's seventh hundred in Test cricket, going past MS Dhoni's India record of six for a wicketk...