 "After LSG release KL Rahul, owner Sanjiv Goenka says players 'who put the team first before their personal goals' have been retained")
Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) made a shock move on Thursday as they released their captain, KL Rahul, ahead of the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 mega auction. LSG’s list of retention after the deadline ended on Thursday garnered a lot of interest, as KL Rahul’s name was missing, and Nicholas Pooran was retained for a whopping Rs 21 crore. Pooran is reportedly set to captain LSG next season.
The news of Rahul leaving LSG was doing the rounds for a while but it still came as a surprise as it’s very difficult to buy top Indian players in the auction. Rahul’s fate was probably already sealed when he was involved in a chat with an animated Goenka after LSG’s lost Sunrisers Hyderabad in IPL 2024. In a rare incident, a team owner in IPL was seen publicly discussing matters with his captain.
Also Read | Lucknow Super Giants IPL 2025: Full list of retained and released players
On Thursday, while discussing the retentions, Goenka did not make any direct comment on why Rahul was released but the businessperson was quite brutal in his assessment of the players released.
“It was a simple mindset to go in with players who have a mindset to win, who put the team first before their personal goals and personal aspirations and we wanted to retain as much as of core we could,” Sanjiv Goenka said.
The fans are now assuming that Goenka was talking about Rahul while making these comments.
Also Read: Full List of retentions and released players for all 10 IPL franchises
Goenka also revealed that Pooran was an automatic choice for Lucknow and that mentor Zaheer Khan, coach Justin Langer, and analysts were involved in making the decisions.
“Our first retention which was an automatic choice, happened within like less than two minutes. We have two uncapped retentions that is Mohsin Khan and Ayush Badoni. It was a process that Zaheer Khan, Justin Langer and the analyst were involved in,” Sanjiv Goenka said.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“We have gone with three bowlers from previous seasons, all Indians. Pooran was a no-brainer for everyone. Ayush has done well for us at No.6 or No.7,” he added.
LSG will enter the IPL mega auction with an auction purse of Rs 69 crore and have one right-to-match option left which they can use to get back one of the former players like Quinton de Kock, Marcus Stoinis, or Krunal Pandya.
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