Delhi: If we look at the position of the team in the matches played till April 17 in IPL 2026, Lucknow Super Giants are on 4 points with 2 wins in 5 matches and they also know that this is not a very good position in the race to qualify for the play-offs. Such a situation was not expected for a team which had T20 specialist batsmen like Rishabh Pant and Nicholas Pooran.

The truth is that after 5 matches, the team camp is thinking whether Puran should be kept on the bench for the next match? Whether they will go into the auction pool again next year or not is a matter to think about after the season. At present, the team is troubled by his injury of not scoring runs this season. Record so far this season: 42 runs in 5 innings at an average of 8.40 and a strike rate of 76, without even scoring 20 once. They are proving to be one of the biggest flop shows of this season now. Even Cameron Green started scoring runs, not Pooran.

It is not that he is a bad batsman or that the team’s choice was wrong. The simple thing is that he is not in form these days and it is affecting the team’s performance. The team has yet to forget the pain of releasing KL Rahul and Bishnoi when the question of Puran’s name being ‘out of syllabus’ came in front of them. Lucknow Super Giants had placed so much hope on Puran that they retained him for Rs 21 crore and even made him vice-captain, but what have they received in return so far?

His record this season is being described as the worst form of his T20 career. When he scored only 13 runs in 15 balls against KKR, it was clear that a different story was going to be made this season. The most important thing is that he has flopped badly against spin bowlers. As a result, the pressure on him to regain his form is continuously increasing. He was accused of being out ‘carelessly’ and not living up to the team’s expectations at key moments of the match.

Against Gujarat Titans, Puran scored 19 runs in 21 balls, out of which 12 balls were ‘dot balls’ and this was when the strike rate was slightly better than two consecutive 6s off Rashid Khan’s balls. This is the same Puran who scored 524 runs at a strike rate of 197 last season and devastated the bowling attacks of other teams while playing at number 3. Even today, this record is that since 2024, no player other than Abhishek Sharma has hit more 6s than Puran.

The team support staff is not even able to understand what to do with Puran? He is not the kind of cricketer to hold the bat and teach him how to stroke. Till 17 April 2026, Puran has played 448 T20 matches in which he has scored 10413 runs and is one of the top batsmen in the world. He is a successful cricketer and that is why he stopped his international cricket career for West Indies and became a professional league cricketer. This is simply a case of out of form and Nicholas Pooran has to make a comeback. When? There is no answer to this question itself.

Tom Moody, the LSG team’s director of cricket, is confident that Pooran’s recovery is not far off, the ‘class’ (talent) is always there. Everyone knows he is a world-class player. He may be going through some bad times right now, but everyone will keep an eye on his ‘counterpunch’.

By the way, let us tell you that during the match against Gujarat Titans on April 12, Puran became the top scorer of Lucknow Super Giants in IPL and broke KL Rahul’s record of 1410 runs. This match was Puran’s 47th IPL match for Lucknow Super Giants and so far he has made 10 fifties for this team and the top score is 87 runs without over. Ayush Badoni is also rising rapidly in this race after completing 1000 runs.