Rishabh Pant After LSG Got Knocked Out: Rishabh Pant has lamented the “lot of gaps” in his team, pointing out the injuries and the absence of some of the key bowlers Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) had in their original squad after the mega-auction last year, following his team’s ouster from the playoffs race in the IPL 2025.
On Monday, LSG became the fifth team to be eliminated from the playoffs race in the IPL 2024. It was even more painful for Pant’s side as it happened in front of their home crowd at the Ekana Stadium in Lucknow when they went down by six wickets against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH).
LSG had set a good total of 205 runs while batting first, riding on fifties from Mitchell Marsh and Aiden Markram and Nicolas Pooran’s 45.
However, surprisingly, a very good batting pitch came to the fore at the Ekana as Abhishek Sharma blasted an 18-ball half-century, and Ishan Kishan, Heinrich Klaasen, and Kamindu Mendis cracked quickfire knocks as well, helping SRH chase down the total in 18.2 overs.
When asked about LSG’s elimination from the playoffs race with still two games in hand, Pant responded by pointing at the fact that LSG didn’t have their preferred bowling attack even from the start of the season when they missed some of their Indian fast bowlers.
Left-arm speedster Mohsin Khan missed the entire season, while Mayank Yadav featured in only two games. Avesh Khan and Akash Deep also missed the start of the season and were inconsistent upon returning.
“Definitely, it could have been one of our best seasons, but coming into the tournament, we had a lot of gaps, injuries and as a team we decided to not talk about that, but it became difficult to fill those gaps for us. The way we planned the auction, if we had had the same bowling… but this is cricket, sometimes things go your way and sometimes they don’t. We take pride in the way we played and take the positives from the season rather than the negative side,” Pant said.
Bowlers were patchy: Rishabh Pant After LSG Got Knocked Out
As many as 13 different players bowled for LSG this season. The fact that Digvesh Rathi, playing in the IPL for the first time, and Shardul Thakur, who was not even picked up in the auction, were LSG’s best bowlers so far tells the story of the struggle for Pant’s bowlers.
“We have a strong batting lineup, have enough firepower, and that is the biggest positive for the season, even for bowlers. A lot of times they bowled in good areas, but they were patchy,” Rishabh Pant added.
Rathi, who has taken 14 wickets in 12 matches at a good economy rate of 8.08, impressed Pant a lot: “Definitely the bowler Rathi has come up nicely for us this season. The way he has bowled was really good to see. Rathi is one of the positives. There are many areas as a team we need to keep improving on to find ourselves getting better and better,” the LSG skipper opined.
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