Lucknow Super Giants head coach Justin Langer hopes captain KL Rahul will be available for the team’s IPL 2024 opener against the Rajasthan Royals on March 24.
“KL was supposed to be here this afternoon to play in the practice game tonight, but unfortunately, he’s had a hold-up on the aeroplane,” Langer said on Wednesday (March 20) “He’ll be at the ground later on tonight, so he’ll probably arrive just after the start of the day’s play.
“He’ll be around for the first time to be with the boys and to be with the team. Everyone’s looking forward to seeing him. We know he has worked very hard to tick off all his return-to-play protocols. He’s worked very hard. He’s been practising, he’s been hitting lots of balls. He’s hopefully ready to go. It’s going to be nice to have the captain with us.”
Rahul, who won the Orange Cap in 2020, has an important season ahead of him, with a probable position in the T20 World Cup squad at the conclusion. While a spot at the top of India’s T20I batting order may be out of reach with Rohit Sharma, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shubman Gill, and Ruturaj Gaikwad currently ahead of him, Rahul could make a case for himself as a middle-order keeper-bat, a role he excelled in during his breakout 2016 IPL season with Royal Challengers Bengaluru. Such a move would not deprive LSG of trade acquisitions, since Rahul’s Karnataka teammate Devdutt Padikkal could slot in as an opener.
Langer kept LSG’s batting order plans under wraps, but coach did say Rahul’s World Cup prospects would improve if the team had a successful season. “My belief, which I’ve held for about 25 years, is that if the team succeeds, everyone benefits. As a result, from KL’s perspective, if he leads the Lucknow Super Giants to an IPL victory, it means he would have played well, led well, and kept wickets well.
“If we have team success, everyone will be rewarded. That’ll be the message for all the players, including Bishi [Ravi Bishnoi] and KL, and there’s a few others who will be vying for T20 World Cup spots. That’s all part of the game we play. The more they concentrate on playing well for Lucknow the more their chances of being selected will increase.
“It’s a sweet problem, but we’ll work it out. It’s nice to have so much talent in our squad.”
The IPL’s first-time coach also predicted that the surfaces at the Ekana Stadium would be better for batting than they had been the previous season, when just three of the seven games saw scores in excess of 170.
“We’ve done a lot of work here on the pitches. I’ve been all across it. They’ve changed the water that goes into the pitches. They’ve also changed some of the soil. At the end of last season, they changed the soil on the pitches, and we saw some good results in the World Cup. They played a few games here. There were some high scoring games. I think South Africa vs Australia was a very high-scoring game, right?
“We’ve trained here now. We had a practice game last night under lights, and we’ve had two very good training sessions on the middle wickets, and the pitches were excellent – very, very good… they recognized that we needed to improve the pitches from last year, so we’re all very hopeful that we see excellent pitches. From what I’ve seen so far, though, we have nothing to worry about.”
