Pant was padded up. Three wickets fell. He still didn’t walk in. The official explanation, giving fringe players some game time in a dead rubber, is reasonable on the surface. But 251 runs at an average of 27.88 across 11 innings tells a different story about why a captain might choose the dugout over the crease. LSG finished at the bottom of the table. The timing of this decision deserves a harder look.
What Pant Said at Ekana
On May 15 at Ekana Stadium, Lucknow, Nicholas Pooran, Abdul Samad, and Mukul Choudhary chased down 188 without their captain. LSG won by seven wickets. Post-match, Pant told reporters: “I was ready to bat … the idea came in like, why not try players who have not played much … I was thinking again and again, should I do it or not … sometimes you have to respect the think tank’s decision.”
That last line does a lot of work. A captain framing his own batting call as something the “think tank” decided isn’t clarity, it’s deflection dressed as team spirit.
Rishabh Pant Batting Absence LSG: IPL 2026 The Form Numbers
Seven of his 11 innings this season ended below 20. His only score of note was 68* against SRH. In the seven matches where he scored under 20, LSG won just once. That’s not bad luck across a small sample; that’s a season-long pattern with a direct result on the table. LSG finished with 4 wins from 12 matches, dead last.
The Pooran Problem Pant Created
Tom Moody, LSG’s director of cricket, confirmed the structural damage on record after the May 10 loss to CSK: “Rishabh was keen to bat [No.] 3 this year, so we afforded him that opportunity.” That one decision displaced Nicholas Pooran, who scored 524 runs at a strike rate of 196 batting No. 3 for LSG in 2025, into a lower slot.
Pooran’s IPL 2026 numbers in that reduced role: 216 runs, average 19.63, SR 130.90. When briefly restored to No. 3 against MI, he scored 63 off 21 balls. The talent didn’t disappear; the position did. Moody also confirmed LSG’s Nos. 4-8 posted the lowest average (20.66) and lowest strike rate (128.13) of all ten teams this season. Pant’s positional call sits at the centre of that collapse.
Rotation or Something Harder to Admit
Dead rubbers are legitimate places to try combinations. That part of Pant’s explanation holds. What doesn’t hold is the timing; wickets tumbled at 135/0 in the 12th over, and he still stayed padded in the dugout. A captain confident in his touch takes every opportunity to find form. Pant, with seven single-digit or sub-20 scores behind him, chose not to.
When Moody was asked directly whether the ₹27 crore price tag was weighing on Pant, he replied: “That’s a question you need to ask him. I can’t speak for him on how he’s feeling about the expectation.” That’s not a denial. From a director of cricket defending his captain, it should have been.
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