Rishabh Pant or Nicholas Pooran? Sanjiv Goenka breaks silence on LSG captaincy choice for IPL 2025

Sanjiv Goenka, the owner of IPL franchise Lucknow Super Giants (LSG), said the team's new captain has been decided and will be announced in the next few days ahead of the IPL 2025 season. LSG had been led by KL Rahul in IPL 2022-24 cycle, with Krunal Pandya captaining the team when the batter was ruled out from the later half of IPL 2023. But the franchise chose not to retain the duo ahead of the mega auction, which happened in Jeddah last month.

With Rahul now in the Delhi Capitals and Krunal in Royal Challengers Bengaluru, LSG have leadership options in previous Delhi Capitals skipper Rishabh Pant, current Australia and South Africa T20I skippers Mitchell Marsh and Aiden Markram, as well as West Indies' keeper-batter Nicholas Pooran, who led the national side previously.

“People get surprised easily. I don't think you get surprised easily. It's been decided. But we will announce in the next few days. We have four leaders in our team - Rishabh, Pooran, Markram, and Mitch Marsh.”

“So, it becomes a very strong leadership pool of intellect, though,t and strategy. They are all people who can go for the mindset to win. Rishabh has that hunger, and passion that he wants to win, and do something and show it. So, the team is good and we are happy,” said Goenka in a video on former India opener Aakash Chopra's YouTube channel on Monday.

LSG had retained Pooran for Rs 21 crore, alongside Mayank Yadav and Ravi Bishnoi (Rs 11 crore each) as well as the uncapped duo of Ayush Badoni and Mohsin Khan for Rs 4 crore each. In the mega auction, they roped in Pant for Rs 27 crore, making him the most expensive signing ever in the IPL.

“Our internal feeling is that our auction was very good. Our focus was that our middle order and finishing should be very strong. So, that number three to eight are very strong. Another thing we wanted was to go with an Indian pace attack, instead of international pace, and we went with explosive international batters. So, now we have got a combination of the two,” added Goenka.

He signed off by saying whoever opens the batting between Markram, Marsh and Pant will be decided by the new skipper, coach Justin Langer and mentor Zaheer Khan. "We decided that we had to make our middle order strong and have an Indian core. However, auctions don't go exactly the way you plan it. We made a very big go for Jos Buttler but we fell one or two bid amounts short. Zak (Zaheer Khan), JL (Justin Langer), and the captain will decide it."

"Those are calls that frankly are beyond my capability and competence. Zak has a thought process and I think he has already spoken to the captain a couple of times, and I think Zak, Langer and the captain will be meeting soon together, and all three of them will have a conversation and they will take a call. Whatever their call is, I will support it 100 per cent."

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DNA staff and is published from IANS)