How Lucknow Super Giants messed up another straightforward chase is a question that would vex their supporters. They made numerous blunders, tactically as well as on the field.
Most perplexing was sending an out-of-depth Nicholas Pooran to open the innings in the Super Over. The Trinidadian had laboured for runs and boundaries all season. Suddenly, he was thrown into a high-pressure salon. He got out first ball, attempting a wild sweep of an off-break that spun across him from the low-turning surface.
His captain, Rishabh Pant, said Pooran’s was the first name that came up during the discussion. “We had a discussion as a group, we had a discussion and the name came up was Nicky P. He might not go through the best form of his life, but at the same time, you gotta trust your player in a hard situation like this,” he said.
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Coach Justin Langer contended that the decision was made considering Pooran’s familiarity with fellow Trinidadian Sunil Narine. “If you look at Nicky’s record, he’s seen Narine more than anyone in world cricket. So we felt that he was still the best,” he said.
Pooran has a reasonable match up in this format against him—207 runs off 168 balls with only three dismissals, but he has been in awful form. Langer defended: “I know he hasn’t hit his form yet and Nicky will be the first one to admit it. But we thought if anyone can have a great super over, it’s Nicky Pooran and you back your best players, right?”
“That’s what you do. So he has struggled but if you look at all the numbers, no one plays Sunil Narine, the world-class off spinner, better than Nicky but didn’t come off unfortunately,” he added.
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He backed him to overturn his lean run of form (82 runs in eight games). “He is working on it and it’s amazing, isn’t it? There’s probably no greater T20 player currently in the world over the last few years. It just goes to show he’s human, and you can’t fake confidence but we all try to.”
Pant, though, admitted that they needed soul searching, “We definitely need a break. I think we’re gonna refresh, there is always pressure and it’s gonna be a pressure game always, but at the same time, we have to look for answers inside, not outside,” he said.
He called for accountability. “Just take accountability, each and every guy. Like, it can’t be about one or two guys. It has to be about the whole unit and a lot of people will take accountability for that for sure,” he said,
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Langer blamed his team’s adaptability. “It’s frustrating. I said after the last game I thought the wicket was very good. The red soil pitch and it was fast and bouncy. I said it was and it’s really exciting for cricket and we didn’t adapt today to the black soil, which was slower and lower and spun a little bit. So it’s incredibly frustrating. I feel for the fans. I feel for our supporters. I feel for (0:38) everyone who follows us. We’re not adapting to the conditions as well as we should be,” he said.
The break, he said, would refresh them. “We’ll keep being positive. We’ve got seven days off now until our next game so it’s a chance for us to have a look at things if we need to make any changes or where we’re going to go. But you’ve got to stay positive. If you don’t, no point being here,” he said.
