Rishabh Pant’s inconsistent form is a microcosm of the Lucknow Super Giants’ larger woes in the Indian Premier League (IPL), but head coach Justin Langer says it doesn’t burden the captain, as one may think considering his price.
In 2024 you bought the stumper-batsman for an outrageous $3.21 million, while retaining him this season, which is now having a terrible come and go malfeasance.
Lucknow lost six games in a row, including Monday’s loss to the Mumbai Indians by six wickets, and remained at the south end of the 10-team league with playoff hopes long over.
“It has nothing to do with money, I don’t think,” the Australian told reporters.
It was tough news for a leader… He’s taking a lot of pressure off the team and he goes ahead, like all human beings, with 98% smile.
2% is the part which difficult and to be honest. But he’s slowly getting there, and very shortly in the season he won us a match. I always love it when he is grinning and playing that swashbuckling style of play.
Underwhelming numbers for a batter of his nitrate, Pant has only 204 runs from nine innings this year (SR 128.30).
Langer remarked Pant’s change of order where the wicketkeeper-batsman batted at No.4 to support Nicholas Pooran, who got an opportunity to bat at 3 in the previous match against Mumbai, was not far from finding his attacking game back again.
“He batted down the order for the good of team…to let Nicky P back. “Rishy’s not too far away (from a big score),” said Langer.
“He’s great. As a captain, as a coach, you are still fronting up in the IPL level, aren’t you? That’s all you can do. You’ll keep turning up, and hopefully he helps us grab a few wins in the next couple games.
Mumbai chased down 228 -5 against Lucknow, but they still were not able to defend it.
“We should have definitely scored more runs after the way we started, 10-15 runs short, said Pant post match.
At the start, the fashion we started out with had an intangible edge.