Rishabh Pant, captain of the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG), assured that his team still had hopes to reach the playoffs after suffering a 37-run defeat to the Punjab Kings (PBKS) at the HPCA Stadium on Sunday, May 4. LSG leaked runs, allowing 236/5 in the first innings, despite some commendable bowling efforts from debutant pacer Akash Singh and spinner Digvesh Singh Rathi, each chipping in with two wickets. With the bat, the LSG top three managed just 27 runs with Pant himself contributing only 18 off 17 balls. Ayush Badoni tried to keep the LSG fight going by scoring 74 runs off 40 balls, but the effort was in vain.
Pant opined in the after-match presentation, “We definitely gave away too many runs in the first innings. Dropping key catches at crucial moments can really hurt you. We thought the pitch would behave differently, but we didn’t quite get our lengths right early on. That’s part of the game. The dream is still alive. If we can win our next three matches, we can turn this around.”
On the batting line-up, Pant said, “It makes sense to rely on your top order when they are performing well. You can’t expect them to fire every match. Sometimes you have to hang in there. In this case, we had too many runs to chase, which really hurt us.”
The LSG top order struggled due to the brilliant bowling effort of PBKS’s senior pacer, Arshdeep Singh, who quickly dismissed the top three.
Arshdeep shared, “It was nice to see some movement at the start. Second innings, the conditions cool down and swing is created more for the ball. Winning always acts as a confidence booster for the team but there are still things that need fine tuning. Speaking of Wadhera’s catch to get Marsh out, all I did was pray he would take it. A credit to Wadhera for that catch. Early wickets are what we want against their top three that has been putting runs. We’re just taking it game-by-game and have fun through it.”
