‘Can’t give any more excuses… take decisions on your own’
Rishabh Pant and his team Lucknow Super Giants were handed another defeat at home in Lucknow by his old IPL side, the Delhi Capitals. The home side made a couple of baffling selection decisions in the game and could only manage to set a target of 159, which Delhi chased down with 13 balls remaining and eight wickets in hand. What made matters worse for the hosts was that while Pant came so low down the order that he could not really make an impact (eventually he scored a duck after facing just two balls) while Lucknow’s former captain KL Rahul had a game to remember, guiding his new team Delhi to victory with an unbeaten half century. In the process, KL Rahul also became the fastest player to score 5000 runs in the IPL.
Asked why he had come in so low down the order, Pant had explained: “Idea was to capitalise on a wicket like that by sending Samad up, after that Miller came in… and we just really got stuck in that wicket. Eventually, these are the things we got to figure out and try to find our best combination going forward.”
Pant was also asked to explain why he had used Ayush Badoni as an Impact Sub for consecutive matches while batting first – even though Lucknow had Mayank Yadav’s pace available as a bowling sub option.
“Toss is playing a huge part here, but as a team, we are not looking for excuses. That is one idea why we are impacting Ayush, to get Mayank some game time, just trying to find ways to get him early in the season because it’s already halfway around. He came from NCA now, just trying to fit him in,” Pant told the host broadcaster.
Ambati Rayudu asks Pant to take onus of decisions as captain
But cricketer-turned-analyst Ambati Rayudu wasn’t buying Pant’s reasoning.
“I feel Rishabh Pant really needs to take the onus on himself. He really needs to take the decisions on his own. Sometimes these visuals are not really good if you are a good team. Because you want everything to be closed doors.
You want everything to be said indoors. And also you don’t want any dirty laundry to be washed outside. Pant really needs to take the control of the decisions that are being made at LSG. He needs to come up the order. He cannot give any more excuses. He is the captain. And it is a captain’s sport. We all acknowledge that. Going forward, they need to make a few changes: maybe get Mayank Yadav in. Also Rishabh Pant has to be batting slightly higher. You are visibly quite tensed about the whole situation,” Rayudu said on JioStar in his post-game analysis.