IPL 2025 made headlines not only for the teams’ performances but also the pitches as well. After KKR, Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) mentor Zaheer Khan also showed frustration with the pitch. They lost by eight wickets with 22 balls remaining in their first home game of the season to Punjab Kings.
“What was a little disappointing for me here…” Zaheer Khan said at the press conference. “Considering it’s a home game and in IPL you’ve seen how teams have looked at taking a little bit of home advantage, from that point of view you’ve seen the curator is not really thinking that it’s a home game. I think maybe it looked like, you know, it was Punjab curator out here. So that’s something which we will figure. It’s a new set-up also for me, but I hope that this is the first and the last game when it comes to that. Because you are disappointing the Lucknow fans as well. They’ve come up with so much expectations of winning the first home game here.”
ALSO READ: “In the next T20 World Cup in India, he’ll be number one bowler” – Mohammad Kaif on Varun Chakravarthy
“As a team, we are confident. We accept that we’ve lost the game, and we have got to do whatever it takes to make that impact in the home leg. We still have six more games to go here, and this team has shown in the season so far, whatever little cricket is played, that we have the right outlook and the mindset to look at the IPL. What you can expect is innovation, out-of-the-box thinking, the fight, the hunger, and that sums us up as a team,” he again shared.
However, struggling with injuries to their pace bowlers, LSG would probably have preferred a surface that helped spinners more as well as LSG played only two quicks with Shardul Thakur and Shamar Joseph. Meanwhile, PBKS dominated LSG with their fast-bowling trio of Arshdeep Singh, Lockie Ferguson and Marco Jansen alongside Marcus Stoinis, and they returned figures of 5 for 112 in 13 overs.
“That’s what we are saying. We will go according to what the curator tells us. We are not using this as an excuse. We have seen during the last season that it’s not like batters don’t have to struggle here at times. All these things go on in cricket. But the way the home team should get support, everyone needs to know this is our home team that is playing in Lucknow and what can we do to help them win? Everyone’s contribution is important. We will find a way anyway to win matches,” Zaheer Khan concluded.
