LSG captain Rishabh Pant on Monday said that it was difficult for them to fill the void created by the absence of key bowlers as LSG moved out of the race to the Indian Premier League playoffs. LSG’s six-wicket defeat to Sunrisers Hyderabad knocked them out of the race, with LSG facing a poor campaign from their bowling squad as well.

“Definitely it could have been one of our best seasons but coming into the tournament we had a lot of gaps, injuries and as a team we decided to not talk about that, but it became difficult to fill those gaps for us,” Pant told the broadcaster after their loss to SRH.

However, LSG began the IPL with injuries to Mohsin Khan, Avesh Khan, Akash Deep and Mayank Yadav as well. While they signed speedster Shardul Thakur after the season started and the likes of Avesh and Akash returned, Mayank could only play a couple of matches before being ruled out due to an injury again as well.

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“The way we planned the auction, if we would have had the same bowling… but this is cricket, sometimes things go your way and sometimes they don’t, we take pride in the way we played and take the positives from the season rather than the negative side. We have a strong batting lineup, have enough firepower, and that is the biggest positive for the season,” said Pant, who himself had a horror season as a batter as well.

Rishabh Pant also said that LSG found it difficult to keep up with the other teams as the race to the playoffs got intense.

“The first half of the season we played really well but the second half it became tougher and tougher to catch up with the teams on the brighter side. (Digvesh) Rathi has come up nicely for us, his first season, the way he bowled, he is one of the positives, but you need to keep improving yourself and get better and better as the seasons go,” he shared among the positives.