Lucknow Super Giants slid to their ninth loss of the season and stayed rooted to the bottom of the table with a 4-9 record after a night that briefly looked like it might belong to their batters, not their collapse.
Mitchell Marsh and Josh Inglis tore into the attack to leave LSG on 0-83 in the six-over powerplay, with Marsh making 96 in his overnight innings and Inglis racing to 60 from 29 balls. Marsh struck five sixes and 11 fours, while Inglis helped turn the innings into a surge that had the chase or total, depending on the stage of the game, looking properly alive before Yash Raj Punja bowled Inglis and had Nicholas Pooran caught down the ground.
Rishabh Pant, speaking after the match in a broadcast interview, did not hide from the frustration but rejected the idea that the side was broken. “Sometimes, you know, it is hard,” he said. “On a (flat) wicket like this, there is less margin for the bowlers, you know and just having too many suggestions doesn't work you know.” He added, “We are proud as a team regardless of how our situation is right now,” and said, “You know, the kind of team we have, we know we can win this.” Pant also said, “Regardless of anything we are confident enough as a team and as individuals,” and, more bluntly, “It hasn't gone our way and everyone knows that but that doesn't take away the fact that we are a f***ing good team.”
The result landed in a season already defined by drift for Lucknow, who endured a six-game losing streak and at one point were bowled out for 149 and 116 while conceding 254 against Punjab. This time, though, the top order finally found its best form of the year, even if it could not rescue the side from the same ending that has followed them for weeks.
There was also a reminder of how quickly the league can spin toward individual milestones. The 19-year-old Vaibhav Sooryavanshi hammered 93 in 38 balls with ten sixes, taking his season tally to 53 sixes and leaving him six short of Chris Gayle's IPL record of 59 sixes set in 2012. For LSG, the numbers were impressive in the wrong way: a 4-9 record, a ninth loss, and another day when runs came but control did not.
Pant's comments carried added weight because they came in the same week he was omitted from India's ODI squad for three home matches against Afghanistan next month and stripped of the Test vice-captaincy for the one-off Test, with KL Rahul handed that role. The immediate future for India will now be measured by those selections, but for Lucknow the next task is simpler and harder at once: stop the slide before the season disappears entirely.
