“We were about to…”: LSG owner brings up past in indirect message to KL Rahul

In a recent statement, Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) owner Sanjiv Goenka mentioned his time with former IPL franchise Rising Pune Supergiant (RPS) to indirectly blame KL Rahul and LSG’s team management for their IPL failure last season.

After making the playoffs for the first 2 seasons, LSG slipped to the seventh spot in the last edition, sparking speculations of KL Rahul’s release from the franchise.

On top of this, Goenka’s animated conversation with Rahul after LSG’s thrashing defeat to Sunrisers Hyderabad last season went viral. In the video, Goenka can be seen having a heated argument with Rahul and he seemed to be quite unhappy with the team’s performance.

This is the second time that Goenka has owned an IPL franchise. His RPSG group owned Rising Pune Supergiant in IPL 2016 and in 2017 when BCCI wanted 2 new franchises to replace Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings.

In the first year, MS Dhoni led the team, but he was removed as captain before the next season and replaced by Steve Smith. RPS reached the finals of IPL 2017 but failed to chase down the small total of 130 against Mumbai Indians.

“The Super Giants family has been in the IPL for five years. Two of those were with Pune, and three were with Lucknow. When we reached the finals with Pune, it was a new and inexperienced team. You leave out Steve Smith and MS Dhoni, we didn’t have much experience in the team,” Goenka said on RPS’ defeat in the IPL final.

“We were about to win the final, but due to our lack of experience, we lost. So making the right calls in those crunch moments is key,” Goenka added.

However, Goenka’s statement about there being no experienced players in the RPS side barring Dhoni and Smith isn’t true at all as they had the likes of Ajinkya Rahane, Manoj Tiwary, Dan Christian and Jaydev Unadkat playing in the final.  

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