Former Indian opener Virender Sehwag believes Lucknow Super Giants shot themselves in the foot by dropping Quinton de Kock in the all-important Eliminator against Mumbai Indians, which they went to lose by a gargantuan margin of 81 runs at the MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai on Wednesday.
LSG picked Kyle Mayers ahead of Quinton de Kock but the former could only manage 18 runs in the run-chase of 183 runs. In fact, the South African was kept on the sidelines by LSG for most of the season as they gave more chances to Kyle Mayers. Quinton played four matches for LSG in IPL 2023, in which he scored 143 runs at an average of 35.75 and a strike rate of 140.19.
On the other hand, Mayers scored 379 runs in 13 matches for LSG at an average of 29.15 and a strike rate of 144.10. In fact, Quinton de Kock’s omission was even more baffling after full-time skipper KL Rahul was ruled out with a hip injury as LSG needed more cohesion at the top of the order.
However, if LSG had to play the left-handed South African, they had to drop one out of Kyle Mayers, Nicholas Pooran, Marcus Stoinis, and Naveen-ul-Haq, who all had performed consistently for LSG throughout the season. Ergo, there were selection headaches for the franchise.
LSG stand-in skipper Krunal Pandya revealed it was tough to drop Quinton de Kock but they backed Kyle Mayers because he has a good record while playing at Chepauk.
“It’s always a tough decision to drop Quinton, he is a world-class batter, Kyle had a good record here so we thought of playing him for today. Their batters played the fast bowlers pretty well so I just thought we could do something new[on starting with the spinners],” said Krunal in the post-match presentation after the loss.
However, Virender Sehwag had a contrasting opinion on the same.
“Even I have a good record in Chennai as I hit 319. But it doesn’t mean that even today I will go out there and score. Current form also matters and I feel Lucknow shot themselves in their own foot (by dropping De Kock),” said Sehwag on Cricbuzz.
There is no denying the fact that LSG were too reliant on the shoulders of their overseas players and it led to their downfall as the Indian players could not deliver for them.
