Rishabh Pant makes a mockery of IPL’s costliest player tag, again and again
Lucknow Super Giants’ ₹27-crore batter held himself back while his team needed runs on the board against Delhi Capitals.
Lucknow Super Giants’ ₹27-crore batter held himself back while his team needed runs on the board against Delhi Capitals.
Lucknow Super Giants’ ₹27-crore batter held himself back while his team needed runs on the board against Delhi Capitals.
Rishabh Pant's poor performances in the Indian Premier League continued in Lucknow Super Giants' (LSG) latest home match in IPL against Delhi Capitals.
Pant cut a sorry figure against his former employers for the second time this season. On Tuesday, he was dismissed for a duck (2 balls) in the 20th over. He had been dismissed for a six-ball duck against Delhi in LSG’s IPL 2025 opener.
Pant came into IPL 2025 as the costliest player in the history of the franchise event. Eyebrows were raised when LSG went all out to secure the services of the wicketkeeper batter in the IPL Mega Auction for a whopping ₹27 crore. The fee erased Punjab Kings' bid of ₹26.75 crore spent on Shreyas Iyer from the record books within minutes.
Tonight, Pant only entered action in the final over after the dismissal of Badoni (36 off 21). But his batting in the two remaining deliveries was almost comical. For a top-order batter, highly valued by Team India and LSG, Pant swung his willow like a tail-ender. He missed the first ball, pitched at length. He tried playing a reverse lap in the final delivery and missed that, too, getting bowled.
It wasn’t just the manner of his dismissal but the timing of his arrival that came as a surprise. The Lucknow bench (or he himself?) held back Pant and promoted an impact sub, Ayush Badoni.
Teams batting first rarely use the impact sub-card on a batter unless there is a major collapse. But LSG had only lost their fourth wicket (110/4) at the end of the 14th over when they decided to roll out impact sub, Badoni, even as their ‘explosive’ batter Pant sat on the bench.
Pant has scored only one fifty in eight innings this season, a 63 against Chennai Super Kings in Lucknow on April 14. Pant's scores in the IPL this season are 0, 15, 2, 2, 21, 63, 3, 0.
Interestingly, Pant was recently promoted to the A Category in BCCI's annual contracts, while Shreyas Iyer, Suryakumar Yadav, Yashasvi Jaiswal, and Axar Patel were retained in the B Category.