Lucknow Super Giants’ mentor Zaheer Khan was the third coach in the last week ruing the lack of support for the home side as far as the wickets are concerned. Lucknow Super Giants could only muster 171 runs while batting first and the Punjab Kings chased it down quite easily.
Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) mentor Zaheer Khan was quite vocal about his side not getting enough assistance out of the surface at the BRSABV Ekana Stadium in Lucknow, their home venue after Punjab Kings packed their bags just a little over three hours into the contest. Khan wasn’t the first one through the last week to voice himself against the surface not being conducive to the home side after Kolkata Knight Riders and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) coach Stephen Fleming, however, from what was played out, it actually was a decent wicket with both the batters and bowlers getting their due.
The ball was seaming around and Arshdeep Singh, Marco Jansen and Lockie Ferguson used the assistance to their advantage. It wasn’t like there were demons on the pitch. As Aiden Markram and Nicholas Pooran showed and the three Punjab Kings batters later on, if the batters applied themselves and played a bit on the backfoot, there were runs to be had.
“What was a little disappointing for me here… considering it’s a home game, is that in IPL you’ve seen how teams have looked at taking a little bit of home advantage, from that point of view you’ve seen the curator is not really thinking that it’s a home game,” Zaheer said at the post-match press conference. “I think maybe it looked like, you know, it was Punjab curator out here.
“So that’s something which we will figure. It’s a new set-up also for me, but I hope that this is the first and the last game when it comes to that. Because you are disappointing the Lucknow fans as well. They’ve come up with so much expectations of winning the first home game here,” Zaheer added.
Lucknow Super Giants could only muster 171 runs while batting first and the Punjab Kings chased it down quite easily in just 16.2 overs with a couple of batters scoring fifties and another staying unbeaten on 27-ball 43.
Captain Rishabh Pant, who averages 5.67 in three matches, has to return to form. His no-show is hurting the team’s ability to kick on if Pooran or Mitchell Marsh don’t score. Since LSG were three down inside the powerplay itself, Pooran and Ayush Badoni had to do the repair job a bit cautiously, otherwise, losing another wicket at that point would have been a death knell. Zaheer was more hopeful than practical about Pant showing up with the bat since it hasn’t been the case so far, especially with a weakened bowling attack.
