The skipper felt that the team’s auction strategy was solid, but the injuries ruined their plans.
Skipper Rishabh Pant admitted that injuries and missing players had a big impact on Lucknow Super Giants’ (LSG) poor Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 campaign. His comments came after the team was officially knocked out of the playoffs race following a loss to Sunrisers Hyderabad.
LSG scored 205 while batting first, with strong half-centuries from Mitchell Marsh and Aiden Markram. But Pant believed the team fell about 10 runs short of what was needed. In reply, Sunrisers chased down the target comfortably, as Abhishek Sharma smashed 59 runs off just 20 balls to seal the win with 10 deliveries to spare.
During the post-match presentation, Pant said the season didn’t go as they had hoped. He explained that before the tournament even began, they knew there were issues in the squad due to injuries. Although the team decided not to focus on those problems, the gaps caused by unavailable players became difficult to fix as the season went on.
“It couldn’t be the best season for us,” Pant said. “Getting into the tournament we knew a lot of gaps were there because of injuries. We decided we won’t talk about that, but it became difficult to close out those gaps.”
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Pant was pointing to the unavailability of several key players that affected the team’s performance. Mohsin Khan could not play a single game this season, while Mayank Yadav made a short comeback but was once again sidelined due to a back injury. Bowlers like Avesh Khan and Akash Deep also had fitness issues and could only join the playing XI halfway through the tournament.
The skipper felt that the team’s auction strategy was solid, but the injuries ruined their plans. He mentioned that if their full-strength bowling attack had been available, things might have turned out differently. However, he accepted that this is part of the game that sometimes things work out, sometimes they do not. He encouraged the team to focus on the positives rather than dwell on the negatives.
“The way we planned the auction, if we had the same bowling [attack], the story would be different,” Pant said. “At the same time, this is cricket, things can happen. Sometimes they go your way, sometimes they don’t. Need to take pride in the way we’re playing. Need to look at the positives other than discussing more on the negative side.”
LSG are currently seventh in the points table with 10 points from 12 matches. Although they are out of the playoffs race, they will aim to end their season on a positive note with two games still left to play.
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