 "KL Rahul gets public rebuking from team owner Sanjiv Goenka after LSG thrashed by SRH - watch video")
Lucknow Super Giants suffered a crushing 10-wicket defeat against Sunrisers Hyderabad at the Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium in the Indian Premier League (IPL) on Wednesday. Batting first, LSG crawled to 165/4 in 20 overs. Hosts SRH romped home with 10 wickets and 10.2 overs to spare as Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma obliterated the bowlers.
KL Rahul won the toss and decided to bat. LSG’s struggles with the willow were visible early as they got their first boundary only in the 10th over albeit hitting a couple of sixes before it.
KL Rahul himself struggled to unleash the shackles with a laboured 29 runs from 33 balls. It was only Nicholas Pooran (48 off 26 balls) and Ayush Badoni (55 runs in 30 balls) that gave the visitors some sense of respectability with the total - still well below par.
In the chase, Head and Abhishek had no trouble whatsoever. The Aussie struck 89 runs from 30 balls and Abhishek powered 75 runs from 28 balls with SRH getting the job done with utter ease.
Beyond the massive defeat, video footage of LSG team owner Sanjiv Goenka with captain KL Rahul might not go down well with the squad. In the viral social media video, Goenka can be seen publicly and quite animatedly reprimanding the wicketkeeper-batter.
This is just pathetic from @LucknowIPL owner
— SRI (@srikant5333) May 8, 2024
Never saw SRH management with players on the field or even closer to dressing room irrespective of so many bad seasons and still face lot of wrath for getting involved. Just look at this @klrahul leave this shit next year #SRHvsLSG pic.twitter.com/6NlAvHMCjJ
Impact Shorts
More ShortsIn the post-match presentation, KL Rahul was at a loss to describe SRH’s comfortable chase.
“Am lost for words. We have watched that kind of batting on TV. But this is unreal batting. Everything seemed to find the middle of the bat. Kudos to their skills. They have worked hard on their six-hitting skills,” KL Rahul said after the match.
“They didn’t give us a chance to know what the pitch played in the second innings. Was hard to stop them as they teed off from ball one,” he added.
KL Rahul said SRH would have chased 240 runs also considering how well they were striking the ball.
“Once you are on the losing side, there are question marks on the decisions taken. We were 40-50 runs short. When we lost wickets in the powerplay, we couldn’t get any momentum,” KL said.
“Ayush and Nicky batted well to get us to 166. But even if we would have got 240, they could have chased it as well,” he added.
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