The 64th match of the Indian Premier League (IPL) is set to be played between Delhi Capitals and Lucknow Super Giants at the Arun Jaitley Stadium. It is kind of a dead rubber encounter even as both teams are still alive in the tournament. Their net run-rate is too low and only a miracle can take them into top four at the moment. In fact, more than the match, all the focus is on LSG captain KL Rahul after the video of his animated conversation with team owner Sanjiv Goenka went viral after the previous game against Sunrisers Hyderabad.
LSG were thumped by SRH as the latter side chased down the 166-run target in just 9.4 overs with Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head ripping apart the opposition bowlers. The 10-wicket loss apparently didn’t go down well with the franchise owner who was seen involved in a chat with the captain and all didn’t seem cozy between them at the time. Moreover, reports surfaced soon after that Rahul will step down as the captain of LSG in the last two matches and won’t be retained for the next season as well.
However, LSG assistant coach Lance Klusener has played down all the developments and has called the chat between Rahul and Goenka a ‘robust discussion between cricket lovers.’ He also cleared that there hasn’t been any discussion regarding the captaincy change as well. “No, certainly no discussions around that [captaincy change]. I don’t see any problem with some robust discussion between two cricket lovers. I don’t see any problem with that. For us, I guess, it’s just a storm in a teacup. We love a robust discussion, I think that’s how teams get better. So, it’s not a big thing for us,” Klusener said.
Meanwhile, LSG face an uphill task if they are to finish in the top four due to poor net run-rate of -0.769. They will have to win their last two matches against DC and MI by huge margins and also hope that other results go their way. But Lance Klusener is not fretting much over scenarios and believes they can only focus on what is in their hands as they try to win their last two games.
“We’ve got two games to go. It doesn’t really matter what’s happened in the past, whether we’ve won or lost, it makes no difference to us. We’re focusing on the next two games. And how best we can get over the line in both of them. Whether we then qualify or not, I guess, that’s of our making from the way we played. But, our focus really is just to getover the line tomorrow and then we’ll worry about Mumbai after that,” Klusener added.