"Stop Retaining...": Pant's Excuse Behind LSG's Poor Show Gets Sharp Retort

Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) wicket-keeper batter Rishabh Pant cited the team's extensive injury list as the biggest reason behind the side's poor show in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 campaign. After LSG were eliminated from the playoffs race, Pant said that the fact that the team didn't get the services of their primary fast bowlers - Mayank Yadav and Mohsin Khan - led to their underwhelming show this year. However, former India cricketer Mohammad Kaif gave the LSG management a blunt response on the 'excuse', saying the owners shouldn't have retained such injury-prone players.

Ahead of the IPL mega auction last year, LSG had retained Nicholas Pooran (Rs 21 crore), Ravi Bishnoi (Rs 11 crore), Mayank Yadav (Rs 11 crore), Mohsin Khan (Rs 4 crore), and Ayush Badoni (Rs 4 crore). Of the lot, Mayank barely played 2-3 games while Mohsin couldn't feature in even a single game this year.

"I would rather pay money to retain players who can play the full season. LSG's entire bowling attack is injury-prone. I'm not saying injuries don't happen, but for players who are more susceptible to them, stop retaining them for big money. Instead, pick them up at the auction," Kaif said after the match.

Even Akash Deep, one of the pacers LSG bought in the auction, wasn't available for the entire season. At the end of the match against SRH on Monday, Pant cited the voids left by these players' absence as the reason behind the team's failure to fulfill its potential.

"Definitely it could have been one of our best seasons, but coming into the tournament,t we had a lot of gaps, injuries,s and as a team we decided to not talk about that, but it became difficult to fill those gaps for us," Pant said after the game.

"The way we planned the auction, if we had had the same bowling... but this is cricket, sometimes things go your way and sometimes they don't, we take pride in the way we played and take the positives from the season rather than the negative side," he added.

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