LSG knocked out of IPL 2026 playoffs: Three things that Rishabh Pant's men got wrong this season

Lucknow Super Giants and Mumbai Indians had been languishing at the bottom half of the 2026 Indian Premier League points table for quite some time now. And in the latest Sunday double header on 10 May, both teams were eliminated from the playoffs race in the space of a few hours – with Chennai Super Kings and Royal Challengers Bengaluru landing the knockout blow on LSG and MI respectively.

LSG was the first of the two teams to bow out of the playoffs race, their away fixture against CSK at Chepauk having taken place during the afternoon. And with their season practically over now, the Super Giants will be playing for pride for the next couple of weeks.

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And the fact that they have now failed to reach the playoffs for three consecutive seasons will be a bitter pill to swallow. Especially for Pant, who has failed to justify his 27-crore price tag for two consecutive seasons now – either as captain or as batter.

With the curtain now falling on LSG’s playoff hopes, it’s time for us to revisit three things that the Super Giants got wrong in the 19th IPL season:

Lack of a settled batting combination

After a torrid run with the bat last year, Pant decided to push himself up the order this season in order to maximise his chances of boosting his T20 form. And in the LSG’s very first game of the season, against Delhi Capitals at home, keeper-batter walked out to open alongside Mitchell Marsh, breaking up the latter’s tried-and-tested opening combination with Aiden Markram, which was surprising considering the South African T20I captain’s red-hot form as an opener at the T20 World Cup.

Pant, however, would drop himself to No 3 in the very next game as LSG reverted to the Marsh-Markram combination. It was perhaps a sign of the fact that the Super Giants were not entirely sure about their batting order, and were simply reacting and making last-minute decisions on a day-to-day basis.

Aiden Markram arguably was the worst affected by Lucknow Super Giants' frequent chopping and changing of their batting order, with the South African T20I captain having collected just 231 runs in 11 outings this season. Reuters

That would perhaps explain why they would keep chopping and changing for the remainder of the season, with Lucknow going on to use five different opening combinations – Marsh being the common factor in all of them. One could cut the LSG management some slack for the fact that Josh Inglis wasn’t available until May due to his wedding, and proved to be an instant hit alongside Marsh once he finally linked up with the squad.

Also Read | Pant blames lack of 'clarity' for LSG's poor run in IPL 2026: 'Hopefully we can figure out, take it for next season'

That however, doesn’t justify the team’s decisions such as randomly pushing Markram up and down the order and not allowing him to settle into one role and having middle-order specialist Ayush Badoni open for a couple of games. Such decision-making rarely leads to success in the sport, especially in the batting-dominated format that is Twenty20.

Inability to find ideal replacements for injuries

LSG Director of Cricket Tom Moody, while reflecting on some of the franchise’s shortcomings this IPL season, pointed out that one of the key factors was the impact of Wanindu Hasaranga’s absence on the Super Giants this season.

The wily leg-spinner, after all, has more than 340 wickets to his name across T20s at an average and economy of 17.51 and 7 – numbers that are pure gold from the perspective of a franchise owner sitting at the auction table, about to raise his or her paddle. Add a strike rate of 142.27 with nine half-centuries in the format as a lower-order batter, and you have a match-winner at your disposal.

The leg-spinner, therefore, would have been integral to LSG’s plans for IPL 2026, and Moody admitted his absence – caused by a hamstring injury suffered in Sri Lanka’s opening game of the recent T20 World Cup – had a detrimental effect on the team’s balance.

The fact that LSG did not have an ideal back-up for Hasaranga by the time the auction was done and dusted is something that they might rue for the rest of the season and the year. They did sign George Linde in his place, but the South African left-arm spinner hasn’t had much of an impact in his three appearances this season.

Not clicking as a unit

In his post-match comments, Moody also suggested that the lack of runs from the middle-order was also to blame for Lucknow getting knocked out of the playoffs race with three games left, and finding themselves at the bottom of the table.

Also Read | Is Rishabh Pant alone to blame for LSG’s downfall? ‘Too many minds’ remark hints at larger malaise

LSG’s case, however, is that of failing to click as a unit for a majority of their season. That would perhaps explain the fact that the same bowling unit led by Mohammed Shami would reduce DC to 26/4 in one game while defending a modest total of 141 and would produce a match-winning effort against Sunrisers Hyderabad in the very next game, only to get smashed for 254 against Punjab Kings or fail to defend a target of 229 against MI.

By the same token, the same batting unit, which has crossed the 200-mark in each of their last three outings, got bundled out for a lowly 119 by the Rajasthan Royals while chasing a relatively modest target of 160.

Even the games that they have won this season were all close calls, and Lucknow are yet to produce a comprehensive all-round performance that fellow strugglers Mumbai had put up against the Gujarat Titans in Ahmedabad. And with the playoffs out of the picture, that might be one of the things captain Pant and head coach Justin Langer will be eyeing in their remaining fixtures.