Lucknow Super Giants were playing their inaugural season this year in the IPL 2022 tournament alongwith the Gujarat Titans. The team managed to curate a solid list of players who have every potential to push forward and lift the IPL trophy this year but couldn’t make it to the final as RCB defeated LSG in the high scoring eliminator played at Eden Gardens.
Captain KL Rahul’s slow batting in this knockout match caused the match and chances to be in the second qualifier. Rahul has undoubtedly been one of the finest white-ball batsmen in the world as of now. He has shown some stellar performances in the last few years’ IPL tournaments. Though he scored fifty in the match but he batted at 136 strike rate which is slow when you’re chasing 200+.
“Lucknow batting for 20 overs without losing a single wicket on Wednesday was incredible. It’s not something you can ever imagine happening, considering the risks you take and the shots you play. Quinton de Kock and KL Rahul always had the potential to do something special as an opening partnership but that was crazy and puts them in a great position to go on and win the tournament,” England star Kevin Pietersen said in a column on Betway insider.
There are some prominent proficient Indian players too in the Lucknow team but didn’t perform as per expectations in the eliminator. Krunal Pandya, Deepak Hooda, and Manish Pandey are some of the most notable players in the Lucknow Super Giants team. But apart from Indian players, the franchise has also invested abundantly in bringing over some of the world’s best cricketing talents such as Quinton de Kock, Marnus Stoinis, Jason Holder, and others.
Deepak Hooda is the latest debutante in the Indian cricket team, which is one of the reasons why he has been performing pretty confidently in the IPL matches. Experts are impressed by Hooda’s brilliant performance of power hitting in the first half of the previous season of IPL, i.e. in 2021. He has the potential to smash the opponent team’s bowlers for Lucknow Super Giants. In fact, fans and experts are looking forward to seeing him as one of the key batsmen in this brand new IPL franchise.
Quinton de Kock, the South African wicket-keeper cum batsman, is best known for his smashing opening performance alongside Rohit Sharma for the Mumbai Indians team in the last few IPL seasons. De Kock is definitely one of the most destructive batsmen in the cricketing world today, with smashing starts in the power play segment of IPL. Given his trailblazing batting performance, it will not be a matter of surprise if he goes on to score the maximum runs in this year’s IPL tournament. He has been able to score a total score of 2256 across 77 matches in IPL, with an average hit rate of 31.33.
With stellar performers in the team, the Lucknow Super Giants shown impressive consistency in their performance in this IPL season. However, there have been some instances where the team was unable to put up quite a show – losing some matches back-to-back.
Lucknow team management is optimistic of the side and believe that they would do well in next year’s IPL 2023.
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