Lucknow Super Giants ‘ mentor Zaheer Khan expressed his disappointment about the home ground pitch after the loss against Punjab Kings at Ekana Stadium, Lucknow. PBKS registered an easy win in their second IPL 2025 game by chasing a target of 172 runs in 16.2 overs and with eight wickets in hand.
After the match, Zaheer expressed that it felt like the Punjab curator curated the pitch as LSG couldn’t utilize the home advantage.
“What was a little disappointing for me here, considering it’s a home game. In IPL, you’ve seen how teams have looked at taking a little bit of home advantage, you know, so yeah, from that point of view, you’ve seen the curator is not really thinking that it’s a home game, you know. I think maybe it looked like, you know, it was Punjab curator out here,” Zaheer said
“That’s something which we’ll figure out. It’s a new setup for me also here. 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,” former India bowler added.
Talking about the loss and the road ahead, Zaheer looked optimistic.
“As a team, we are confident, you know, we accept that we’ve lost the game, and we’re going to do whatever it takes to make that impact in the home leg. We still have six more games to go here,” he said.
Rishabh Pant at the post-match presentation
“The total wasn’t enough, we were 20-25 runs short, but that’s part and parcel of the game. Still assessing the conditions at our home ground. It’s always going to be difficult to get a big total when you lose early wickets, but each and every player is trying hard to take the game forward,” the LSG skipper Rishabh Pant said.
“The idea was to get a slow wicket. I think the slower balls were sticking in. We got to learn from this game and move forward. There are a lot of positives, can’t say much,” he added further.
LSG at the Ekana Stadium
LSG have won 7 out of the 15 matches played at their home ground in Lucknow. They lost 7 matches and 1 match ended with no result. The team has not been able to reach a 200-run mark at the Ekana Stadium with their highest score being 199 runs.
