If I didn't play that stroke, my time wouldn't have been this bad" - Rishabh Pant had confided in Davendra Sharma, his childhood coach, as he began another long, lonely climb through rehabilitation. It wasn't his first time going through such an ordeal, but the frustrations are all the same. The stroke in question was an audacious, premeditated reverse sweep off Chris Woakes in Manchester in July - the one he missed and took flush on the boot, the one that laid him off for months and sent him back to the Centre of Excellence (CoE) in Bengaluru.

"His mindset is such that the more he doesn't play, the more he's itching to get back," Sharma said of Pant's restlessness during his downtime. "He thinks only I am not able to play while the rest are playing. Sometimes, he doesn't even watch those games. He keeps thinking I am part of that team so I should be with the team. But rehab takes time. You can't go at it all the time, it has to be spaced out."

On his comeback trail, as the intensity picked up and the return grew closer, he vowed not to make that kind of a mistake again - one that sets him back and forces him to watch the games he'd rather be shaping in the middle. Not for the first time in his eventful career, he was also asked to shelve the unorthodoxy. But that's just not how Pant rolls.

At the same CoE in Bengaluru where he'd been nursed back to readiness, Pant wasted no time showing he was fit to reclaim his Test spot. His 113-ball 90 in the second innings of the first unofficial Test against South Africa A came after he'd already kept wickets for nearly 140 overs. It was glowing evidence that he was back, as good as new. In the next game, some of the old instincts kicked back in. He took a hit to his helmet trying to reverse sweep another fast bowler and then copped two more hits to the body before retiring hurt. It looked like another injury scare for India just days before the Kolkata Test, but Pant brushed it off, returned to the crease, and batted like only he can - a whirlwind 65 that captured everything about him and his time at the highest level.

At every stage of his career so far, Pant has been invaluable to this Test side. Injury setbacks haven't deterred India from counting on Pant, even if it meant waiting patiently for him to get back to his best. Moving on from Wriddhiman Saha - unarguably one of the best wicketkeepers in the country, also became easier only because Pant looked every bit as generational as the man who'd previously kept Saha out, MS Dhoni. There was neither the need nor the space to fit a second keeper into the XI just for his batting, which in Saha's case, wasn't even the stronger of his two suits. India's balance demanded focus elsewhere, while Pant fit seamlessly into the middle-order and behind the stumps.

Dhruv Jurel though, has made it nearly impossible for India to look away and stick to the convention of picking only one wicketkeeper-batter in the XI. He's been a dependable second-choice keeper, filling in when needed behind the stumps. But he has also gone well beyond that, establishing his batting credentials while still ticking every box expected of a specialist back-up. His last eight first-class scores read: 140, 1, 56, 125, 44, 6*, 132* and 127*.

The first of those hundreds came against West Indies on a green top in Ahmedabad in Pant's absence, and the twin tons in Bengaluru against South Africa A came with Pant batting alongside him. In perhaps the clearest sign yet of where India's future lies, the two combined for a seventh-wicket partnership - adding 82 off 54 balls.

The trade-offs in making that combination work aren't significant, especially in home conditions. Assistant coach Ryan ten Doeschate spoke recently about the need to groom Nitish Reddy as the seam-bowling all-rounder for overseas Tests, but he barely got a real shot at the role against West Indies. He bowled just four overs in the first Test in Ahmedabad - where India sent down 44.1 and 45.1 overs across the two innings - and none in Delhi, where the team spent much longer on the field (81.5 and 118.5 overs). Nitish got a brief batting stint at No.5 so India could take a look at him, but the 54 balls he played did not offer much in the way of making his case to keep his spot.

Sending Nitish back to the bench would mean stepping away from a plan just two Tests old. But ten Doeschate himself all but confirmed that India are headed in that direction. "I don't think you can leave him [Jurel] out for this Test, is the short answer," Doeschate said on Wednesday (November 12). "But obviously, you can only pick XI as well, so someone else will have to miss out. I think we've got a pretty good idea of the combination. And given the way Dhruv's gone in the last six months and scoring two 100s in Bangalore last week, he's certain to play this week.

"The primary thing is to set up a strategy to win the game, and then if you can accommodate giving guys a chance for development, that comes in. Our position certainly hasn't changed on Nitish. He didn't get much game time in Australia But I would say, given the importance of this series, and given the conditions we think we're going to face, he might not start in this Test," ten Doeschate offered.

There are variables to justify this rethink in strategy. For one, India don't have an overseas Test assignment until next August, and even then, they'll play in subcontinental conditions in Sri Lanka. More crucially, South Africa bring a far superior bowling attack than what West Indies offered last month. Kagiso Rabada (73) and Keshav Maharaj (60) alone have played more Tests than three-quarters of the West Indies bowling unit that featured in Delhi. Though India's current top-order looks different from the one that faltered against New Zealand last year, that stumble in home conditions appears to play a significant role in shaping their batting ideas in a transitional world.