The Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) owner Sanjiv Goenka said that the franchise have assembled a great squad for IPL 2025. He also added that they have four leaders in Rishabh Pant, Nicholas Pooran, Aiden Markram, and Mitchell Marsh as part of their team as well. Pooran (₹21 crore) was LSG’s most expensive retention before the auction as well. They acquired Pant (₹27 crore), Markram (₹2 crore), and Marsh (₹3.40 crore) at the mega auction in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
In a video shared on his YouTube channel ‘Aakash Chopra’, he asked Goenka about his thoughts on the Lucknow Super Giants’
auction. “Our internal feeling is that our auction was excellent. Our focus was that our middle order and finishing should be extremely strong. Our No. 3 to No. 8 is very strong. Our second wish was to go with a completely Indian pace attack instead of international pace, and explosive international batters. Now we have got a combination of the two,” Goenka replied.
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“We have four leaders in our team – Rishabh, Pooran, Markram and Mitch Marsh. So it becomes a very strong leadership pool of intellect and thought, and strategy. They are all people who can go with the mindset to win. Rishabh has the hunger and passion to win. So a good team has been built. We are happy. Overall, the balance is also okay and no team is 10 on 10,” he further added.
In the same video, Sanjiv Goenka also shared that Rishabh Pant’s momentum-changing antics in the 2024 T20 World Cup final made him
wish that Pant should be a part of the Lucknow Super Giants.
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“I saw a video of Rishabh where he did dramebaazi (acting) on the field. He slowed the momentum. I liked that attitude a lot, that you have that extra thought to change the momentum when everything was going against us by removing the pads. From that time, I had in my mind that if only Rishabh had been in my team. That one thing of his appealed to me a lot. Along with that, he came back from a near-fatal injury, and he has come back to a form which is better than his original form. So that resilience and ability to fight and rise again matter a lot. Rishabh is 27. So I hope he will be with LSG for the next 10-12 years,” Sanjiv Goenka concluded.
