‘Entire bowling attack is injury-prone’: Rishabh Pant laments LSG injury list after elimination, Mohammed Kaif slams retentions

Lucknow Super Giants’ bid to make the IPL 2025 Playoffs crashed at their home ground at the Ekana Stadium in Lucknow on Monday, with Rishabh Pant’s men failing to defend a 205-run total against the SunRisers Hyderabad.

Save for Avesh Khan’s economical spell and Digvesh Rathi’s two-wicket burst, the rest of the Lucknow bowling was peppered by the SRH batters, handing them their seventh loss of the season.

Former India batter Mohammed Kaif slammed the LSG management for their auction and retention plans, hinging on a string of injury-prone bowlers. Ahead of the IPL 2025 auction, Lucknow retained speedsters Mayank Yadav (Rs 11 crore) and Mohsin Khan (Rs 4 crore).

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While Mohsin was ruled out of the season in its entirety, Mayank made a return to competitive action in the second half of the tournament, only to play two games before a recurring back issue marked him out of the edition. India seamer Akash Deep too had his share of troubles and wasn’t available consistently through the league stage.

“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 in a video after the match.

Reflecting on the loss, Pant admitted that the team’s season could have been a lot different if not for a spate of injuries.

“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.

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“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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