With the Lucknow Super Giants needing some inspiration as they chased a target of 216 runs at the Wankhede Stadium in an Indian Premier League game against the Mumbai Indians, captain Rishabh Pant’s stay in the middle lasted just two balls. The first ball was dispatched to the ropes. On the second, Pant attempted a scoop and was dismissed. For Pant, this was another twin dejection: with the bat and as a captain as LSG lost to the Mumbai Indians by 54 runs. Defeat for LSG meant they have now lost half of the 10 games they have played in IPL 2025, and find themselves in a desperate scramble to qualify for the IPL playoffs. Pant, meanwhile, has scored just 106 runs in eight innings in IPL 2025 at an average of 13.25 and a strike rate of 96.36.
LSG had bet big on Pant in the IPL mega auction, forking out a record amount of Rs 27 crore.
After the IPL mega auction, LSG owner Sanjiv Goenka had explained a couple of times why the franchise chased Pant’s signature in the auctions, even if it meant spending an eyewatering price of Rs 27 crore.
When asked by Raj Shamani on his Figuring Out podcast what the logic was for buying Pant, LSG owner Sanjiv Goenka had said: “If we wanted an Indian match-winner, there were four options available in the auction that were of that level. Rishabh Pant, Shreyas Iyer, KL Rahul and Yuzvendra Chahal. When you go into a mega-auction, you’re looking for the long-term. Maybe 10 years. You’re looking for a younger player, relatively speaking! You’re looking for someone who has an X-factor. Rishabh has both.”
Goenka had also spoken about the think tank’s thought process on another podcast with Ranveer Allahbadia.
Goenka said that he was warned by a couple of “cricket experts” on the day of the IPL auction that the wicketkeeper-batter was destined to end up at a different team.
“Someone said that you must go for Chahal. Someone else said go for Jos Buttler. No one said you should go for Rishabh. They said it’s decided that Pant will end up at a certain team. Then I casually asked them what price tag would he fetch: someone said Rs 20 crore, someone else said Rs 25 crore. Mentally, I was confident that no one would splurge Rs 27 crore for him,” Goenka told Ranveer Allahbadia in a podcast episode earlier this year.
“There was science behind going at Rs 27 crore for Rishabh Pant. Delhi went till Rs 26.5 crore for Shreyas Iyer (before letting him go to Punjab Kings). So, then my feeling was, ‘Parth Jindal is so crazy for Rishabh Pant, he would go one up at the IPL Auction.’ So, the idea was to go two bids up from Parth, or even three bids up, and that is where he would stop. For Rishabh, we had calculated three scenarios, and in all of them, he was very important to us.”
Goenka said they knew they would get Pant and they had rationed Rs 25 to Rs 27 crore for him in all their plans.
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