Pooran has struck at 82.02 in the season.
Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) had their fourth consecutive defeat of the IPL 2026 on Wednesday, losing to Rajasthan Royals by 40 runs. They are reeling in the bottom two with only two wins and five losses at the halfway mark.
On Wednesday, their bowling attack did an outstanding job to restrict the destructive RR batting unit to 159. But chasing that target, the LSG batting unit collapsed yet again. Mitchell Marsh struck 55 off 41 but no other batter managed over 22 runs, with three ducks in the top four. Former South Africa cricketer Dale Steyn pinpointed Nicholas Pooran as the biggest reason for their batting failures.
The Super Giants had a working opening pair last year in Marsh and Aiden Markram while Pooran was in terrific form as well. This season, however, they have tried three different combinations. The first game saw Rishabh Pant partner Marsh before they moved back to Markram. In the last two games, Ayush Badoni was promoted to open with Markram moving down the order.
The lack of clarity in their planning and players’ roles has made things worse but Steyn believes the reason for all of it is Pooran. Speaking on the ESPNcricinfo Time Out show, Steyn blamed Pooran’s poor form as the reason behind LSG’s muddled batting tactics.
“Pooran. Pooran is the catalyst in this. The poor form of Pooran just means that you’re moving good batters [around] to try and shepherd him. Because I think there’s a seed of doubt in the coach’s minds that they know they need to play him because of what his potential is,” said Steyn.
Nicholas Pooran, who smashed 524 runs at a strike rate of 196.25 last year, is having a disastrous season this time. In seven games, he has managed only 73 runs with a high score of 22. His season strike rate reads abysmal 82.02. His form has compounded their issues.
“But when he doesn’t score runs, you need somebody in there. So Markram is getting thrown from where he should be as an opening batter to the middle order. Because they just want that stability over there. But they’re too scared to drop Pooran because they don’t have the faith in maybe somebody like a [Matthew] Breetzke to come into the team,” he added.
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Markram has the experience of playing in the middle order, and hence LSG have used him in the middle order in the last two games. But his best batting position is at the top. They have Breetzke in the squad but the LSG management does not seem to trust him much, going as far as playing Himmat Singh ahead of him. Josh Inglis is still not available, which further puts them in a difficult situation.
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