Sehwag is right about LSG: a team this expensive should not be this confused
The most expensive captain in IPL history, three former international voices in the dugout, and an overseas group built around Mitchell Marsh, Nicholas Pooran and Aiden Markram. Lucknow Super Giants entered IPL 2026 with the loudest plan in the league. Eight matches later, they are bottom of the table on four points with a net run rate of -1.106, and Virender Sehwag has been the loudest voice asking the obvious question: who is actually running this side?
His most quoted line, after the super-over loss to KKR, was unsparing. "Inka kya dimaag nahi chalta? Kaun le raha hai decisions?" Sehwag's basic point is plain enough. With a batting unit that keeps collapsing under pressure, why does this team keep choosing to chase? "If they had won the toss and opted to bat first, even 140 to 150 would have put the pressure on KKR," he said. "You are not able to chase, but you are hell-bent on chasing." On a thin batting card, that argument is hard to push back on.
A spend that has not bought composure
The numbers around this LSG side were the headline of the auction. Rishabh Pant was bought for ₹27 crore, more than any cricketer has ever cost in this competition. Josh Inglis was the next biggest acquisition at ₹8.6 crore in the mini-auction. Mitchell Marsh, Pooran, Markram and Matthew Breetzke were all retained. The captain has spent most of the season batting at number three, the spot that LSG built their batting plan around in the off-season. Eight games in, that plan looks too vulnerable in the first ten overs and too cluttered after that.
The dugout is unusual too. Justin Langer is head coach. Tom Moody is global director of cricket. Kane Williamson came in as strategic advisor for IPL 2026, on top of Bharat Arun with the fast bowlers and Carl Crowe with the spinners. There is more T20 brain in that room than most franchises can put together in a season. The trouble is that, as Sehwag has been pointing out, the on-field result keeps reading like a side that cannot agree on a plan at the toss.
Pant has been asked to lead in his hardest season
It is fair to say Pant has not made his job easier. His own form last year was poor enough that 151 runs in 12 innings became the headline, with a final-day hundred coming too late to matter. That is the captain LSG re-built the team around, on a contract that would have been a story by itself in any other year. The early signs of IPL 2026 are not what an owner spending ₹27 crore on a leadership choice wants to be hearing in late April.
To be fair to Pant, the squad he is leading has not produced what was promised. The early-overs problem has not been solved, the support cast has not lifted him, and Pooran being moved down the order has not unlocked the middle the way the off-season plan suggested it would. Shaun Pollock's response to Pant's "too many minds" comment after the KKR loss was sharp for a reason: from the outside, that line was the perfect summary of the entire campaign.
Mathematically alive, practically gone
LSG are not yet officially out of the playoff race, but the calendar is unforgiving. Even one more loss would cap them at 14 points, with the typical IPL qualification benchmark sitting around 16. Their remaining fixtures, against Mumbai on May 4, RCB on May 7, Chennai twice on May 10 and May 15, Rajasthan on May 19 and Punjab on May 23, do not look like the schedule of a team about to win four in a row to sneak in. The honest number to look at now is the net run rate of -1.106, the league's poorest, and one that is unlikely to swing back across the next four weeks.
The bigger LSG question is not whether they make the playoffs from here. It is what an off-season looks like for a franchise that bet ₹27 crore on a captain, packed the support staff with marquee names, and ended up with the worst NRR in the league before the IPL was even three-quarters done. Sehwag's question, asked with all the bluntness an ex-opener allows himself, is a fair one for the people running this team to start answering.
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