(Cricket News) Lance Klusener, Lucknow Super Giants assistant coach attaches little importance to the animated chat between skipper KL Rahul and LSG’s owner Sanjeev Goenka. He further quashed all the speculations regarding a potential change in captaincy of the side.
“No, certainly no discussions around that [captaincy change],” Klusener said on Monday, ahead of LSG’s must-win game against Delhi Capitals.
LSG suffered a huge loss against the Sunrisers Hyderabad in an away game, as the home side chased down 165 in just 9.4 overs . The two Hyderabad openers Head and Abhishek went berserk as they chased down the total unbeaten. The defeat severely dented LSG’s net run rate and also their playoffs hopes, as they would now be dependent on the other results as well.
Post the Hyderabad game, Lucknow’s skipper KL Rahul and owner Sanjeev Goenka were seen having animated conversations. Goenka certainly looked unhappy with the sides performance. As it turned out, the incident received a lot of criticism from the former cricketers and media people, who mentioned it as a disrespect towards an Indian player KL Rahul. People believed that such discussions should not happen in front of all the cameras, and that it should take place behind closed doors.
Talking about the incident, Klusener said “I don’t see any problem with some robust discussion between two cricket lovers. I don’t see any problem with that. For us, I guess, it’s just a storm in a teacup. We love a robust discussion, I think that’s how teams get better. So, it’s not a big thing for us,”
KL Rahul has been amongst the talks because of his strike rate this season. Despite of being his sides leading run getter, Rahul still have been under the scanner. He has been slow to get going in a few games and an out of form Quinton De cock hasn’t helped the cause either. Klusener regarding this matter protected his skipper saying, Rahul has the responsibility of guiding the under-performing batting unit.
“I think everybody’s got their own style. KL’s got his own unique style, which has made him a fantastic player not just here in India but around the world and respected around the world. I think this IPL has been exceptionally tough for him because we’ve kept losing wickets at poor stages, which hasn’t allowed him to kick on where he liked. He probably feels like he’s always having to rebuild. So I think as a batting unit around KL we haven’t been as good as we should. So I think it’s just been extremely tough conditions for him in that way.
“It’s something we’ve chatted about as well is that we’ve just kept losing wickets at tough times and batters coming in seem to have to be rebuilding the whole time and not just coming into a platform. So by KL’s high standards he probably would have liked to have kicked on in a few more games and probably would have liked to have at least one or two hundreds that haven’t worked out for him. But, there’s still a couple of games and he’s still in a good space. So we’ve got our fingers crossed for him.”
LSG are now facing a must win situation. With two games left LSG needs to win both of them and also better their NRR. And even if they win both the games, they would still have to wish for CSK, RR or SRH to loose their remaining games. Their qualification on 14 points would be very difficult are their net run rate is currently negative and is behind all the other sides.
ALSO READ : Ackermann and van der Merwe to miss the T20 World Cup
