Pant, Super Giants and a tale of unfulfilled promise

This was a season that the Lucknow Super Giants wanted to have an impact in.

- Sharad Deep

They started with a bang when they bought Rishabh Pant at the mega auction last year for a mouth-watering ₹27 crore.

The money was crazy but so were the expectations. After finishing third in their first two seasons, the seventh-place finish last season hit them hard and they needed a pick-me-up.

They would have hoped that Pant would be the man to inspire a comeback of sorts. But the skipper's partnership with LSG really didn't work out well. The left-handed batter known for his swashbuckling strokes never got going and the lack of runs meant that he was always under pressure.

It didn't help that he would have seen how badly things had ended for their previous skipper, KL Rahul, last season.

A massive overhaul of the LSG management, and reports of bickering between the support staff among other things also seem to have impacted Pant as well as LSG.

The team kept struggling for bowlers in the beginning, but couldn't get it together even after their key bowlers returned to the side mid-season.