Following the loss against SRH, which knocked them out of the race to the playoffs with two games remaining in the season, Pant said that the spate of injuries to key bowlers and Lucknow’s inability to fill those gaps weakened the unit, and led to their forgettable second half, where they lost five of their last six games.
“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,” he said in the post-match presentation. “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’s excuse falls flat
The captain’s statement did not sit well with former India cricketer Mohammad Kaif, who bluntly told the franchise to stop retaining players susceptible to injuries for big money.
“I would rather pay money to retain players who can play the full season. LSG’s entire bowling attack is injury-prone. I’m not saying injuries don’t happen, but for players who are more susceptible to them, stop retaining them for big money. Instead, pick them up at the auction,” Kaif told the broadcasters after the match.
LSG notably spent INR 11 crore to retain Mayank Yadav, who impressed last season with his raw pace and wicket-taking abilities. However, he missed the entire first half of the IPL this year due to injury rehabilitation. He did return in the second half and featured in two games before being sidelined with yet another injury. Mohsin Khan, another fast bowler, retained for INR 4 crore, was ruled out at the start of the season as he continued to recover from an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tear in his right knee, which he had incurred last December during the Vijay Hazare Trophy.
Abhinav Mukund, speaking to ESPNCricinfo, reckoned LSG made a mistake by getting “really emotional” in retaining Mayank.
“Avesh is a tick, but Akash has played a handful of games in the IPL,” Abhinav said. “He’s primary a red-ball bowler known in this country for his red-ball skills. And over and above that, you’ve invested in Mayank Yadav. A lot of teams get emotional about their picks, they get really emotional like ‘we’ve found him, we need to have him, we need to ensure that he’s here.’ That’s the same with Bishnoi.
Former Australian cricketer Tom Moody, speaking on the same platform reckoned, LSG’s auction plans for the bowling unit were bound to fall apart after the franchise invested INR 48 crore on Pant (INR 27 crore) and Nicholas Pooran (INR 21 crore).
“The expense on Rishabh Pant and Nicholas Pooran, those two players, makes it very hard to build a very strong bowling unit,” Moody said. “Because you just don’t have the funds to compete at the auction table.
“In an ideal world, it’s great to have Pooran, [David] Miller, [Mitchell] Marsh, Pant… all these are impactful batters but at the end of the day you need to bowl. You’ve got to be able to have an impactful bowling unit in powerplays. Be adaptable in the middle overs and take wicket and squeeze the opposition. And in the back-end of the innings, you need people to close the game under pressure – take wickets, bowl those really challenging overs when the opposition is going hell-for-leather against you. And I just don’t think they’ve got any of that.”
