Rishabh Pant, who made his name as one of the most talented batsmen in modern cricket and made headlines after being sold to Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) for a record amount of Rs 27 crore, has been in a slump for the last few years.
During a recent interview with Times of India (TOI), former Team India captain Sourav Ganguly opened up about Rishabh Pant’s recent downfall.
Rishabh Pant is struggling as LSG captain
For two consecutive seasons, the keeper-batsman played as the captain of Lucknow Super Giants in the Indian Premier League (IPL). He has not yet achieved success as the captain of the team. Notably, his individual performance saw a significant decline in IPL 2025 and then again in IPL 2026.
Rishabh Pant’s form can also affect the team’s performance. Furthermore, persistent injuries on several occasions halted his hard-earned momentum.
Captaincy and leadership roles come with added pressure. Some cricketers can carry on with the additional burden, while some cricketers find it very difficult to balance two different profiles, one of captaincy and the other of individual performance. In the case of Rishabh Pant, he looked far from his best in the IPL after being appointed as the captain of LSG.
As of now, Pant has served LSG as the captain for the 2025 and 2026 seasons. Under his leadership in these two seasons, the team played a total of 28 matches. In these 28 games, Pant has led the team to 10 wins and 18 losses, resulting in a win percentage of around 35.7%. Lucknow ranked 7th in 2025th, And this season, they finished their campaign as the tenth team in the 10-team league points table.
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Pant’s individual batting figures also deteriorated
If we talk about Rishabh’s individual performance with the bat, last season he scored 269 runs at an average of 24.45, while in 2026 his batting average was 28.36 and he scored 312 runs in 13 innings.
Overall, the keeper-batsman has scored 3865 runs in 136 innings throughout his IPL career, taking his overall average to 33.60, which is higher than his batting average in the last two seasons.
Sourav Ganguly told why Pant is struggling?
Sourav Ganguly stressed that Rishabh Pant is a very good Test player and is extremely talented, but somehow, he is still yet to learn how to manage the added pressure of captaincy.
“He is a very good Test player. His Test match batting is world class. He is still finding it difficult to adapt to T20 cricket. I hope he does because he has a lot of talent. Captaincy is a burden on everyone. It’s how you handle it. But then you want to be the captain, right? You want to be the captain because it is a big honour. So you have to get that balance right. You do that, or someone else will,” Sourav Ganguly told TOI. Said in an interview.
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