LSG’s Confused IPL Campaign Raises Questions Over Team Selection and Arjun Tendulkar Snub

When Lucknow Super Giants assembled their support staff, headed by former Australia coach Justin Langer and IPL journeyman coach Tom Moody, the expectation was that the franchise would finally graduate from being a talented but inconsistent side into a genuine title contender.

Instead, what unfolded through the season was a campaign riddled with confused selections, questionable combinations and a team that never quite appeared to know what its strongest XI actually was.

For long phases of the tournament, it seemed that head coach Langer and skipper Rishabh Pant were operating from different tactical playbooks. The body language after defeats, the chopping and changing of personnel and the indecisiveness around batting positions all pointed towards a side searching desperately for clarity.

The biggest talking point naturally remained owner Sanjiv Goenka’s decision to break the bank for Pant at Rs 27.50 crore. While Pant remains one of India’s biggest cricketing brands and among the most impactful match-winners in contemporary Indian cricket, the move inevitably skewed the balance of the squad and perhaps left glaring holes elsewhere.

The most obvious deficiency was the absence of quality overseas fast bowlers. Save South African Anrich Nortje, who himself got only one game, LSG never truly possessed an intimidating foreign pace option capable of changing matches in the middle overs or at the death.

It left the burden squarely on an inexperienced Indian bowling unit.

Among domestic bowlers, only Mohsin Khan (11 wickets) and Prince Yadav (16 wickets) consistently showed signs of promise, while Mohammed Shami looked effective only in phases. Beyond that, the support cast struggled badly.

After his surgery, speedster Mayank Yadav played only four games and failed to pick up a single wicket while leaking runs at an economy rate in excess of 11.

Young left-arm pacer Akash Singh looked tidy in one outing but was severely punished in the next game and never really recovered.

Yet, through all the struggles, LSG persisted with combinations that raised more questions than answers.

Nicholas Pooran, despite repeated failures through the tournament, continued to enjoy an extended run. While franchises often back proven match-winners, there comes a point where persistence begins to look more like stubbornness.

Then came the most curious aspect of LSG’s campaign.

Once the team was effectively out of playoff contention, there appeared little logic in not handing opportunities to fringe players. Which naturally raises the question: why did Langer and Moody never give Arjun Tendulkar even a single game?

Would he really have done worse than Akash Singh or even the burly Avesh Khan, whose IPL journey over nearly a decade has shown little visible improvement in pressure situations?

Ironically, the LSG social media team aggressively pushed an “Arjun Tendulkar yorker package” online, generating considerable traction and engagement. But if those yorkers were genuinely effective enough for promotional campaigns, why was he never considered good enough for an actual match situation?

Or was the famous surname useful only for social media impressions and digital reach?

The irony is hard to miss. In a cricket ecosystem where conversations around nepotism dominate discourse, Tendulkar junior almost appears to be a reverse case – picked by franchises repeatedly but seldom trusted enough for a first XI opportunity.

One also wonders whether Langer or Moody ever explained to the youngster why someone like Arshin Kulkarni, whose painstaking 17 off 24 balls exposed him as a complete T20 misfit in that role, could still be promoted as an opener, while Arjun could not even be trusted with the new ball in a dead rubber.

In the end, LSG’s season may not merely be remembered for losses. It could well be remembered as a campaign where the management never managed to settle on a coherent cricketing identity.