Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) suffered a six-wicket defeat at the hands of Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) at home which shattered their hopes of making it to the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 playoffs. As LSG fail to make it past the group stage for the second consecutive time, franchise's owner Sanjiv Goenka chose to look at the positives and wants his team to play for pride in the remaining two games.
"It’s been a challenging second half of the season, but there’s much to take heart in. The spirit, the effort, and the moments of excellence give us a lot to build on. Two games remain. Let’s play with pride and finish strong," Goenka wrote on X on May 20.
Goenka was visibly upset when Rishabh Pant departed for a single-digit score, thanks to a brilliant catch from Eshan Malinga. A video of him leaving the balcony after Pant's wicket went viral on social media. However, he returned to watch LSG's must-win match.
Pant rues injuries to pacers, lauds Rathi
Pant rued injuries to key bowlers that derailed LSG's chances of making it to the playoffs. At the start of the season, LSG's Mayank Yadav, Avesh Khan, Mohsin Khan and Akash Deep were unavailable due to injuries. Mohsin was replaced by Shardul Thakur who is currently their second-highest wicket-taker. Mayank has been ruled out of the tournament, Avesh is consistent whereas Deep did not live up to the franchise's expectations.
"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 would have 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 than the negative side. We have a strong batting line up, 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," Pant said in the post-match presentation.
Pant said that in the second half of the season, it became tougher for them. He praised spinner Digvesh Rathi who is their leading wicket-taker this season.
"We knew we were 10 runs short because the wicket was playing well, like I said before, we are playing well in patches and unable to close the momentum whenever it turned up on our side. The first half of the season we played really well but the second half it became tougher and tougher to catch up with the teams on the brighter side. The bowler Rathi has come up nicely for us, his first season, the way he bowled, he is one of the positives, but you need to keep improving yourself and get better and better as the seasons go," the wicketkeeper-batter added.
LSG's next two matches, key player missing
LSG's next clash is against Gujarat Titans (GT) on May 22 in Ahmedabad where they will be without the services of Rathi who has been slapped with one-match ban. Their last league stage match is against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) on May 27.