Hyderabad: After Lucknow Super Giants’ bowling was shredded to pieces by Sunrisers Hyderabad’s Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium in Hyderabad on Wednesday, LSG owner Sanjiv Goenka was seen speaking animatedly to his Indian Premier League (IPL) side’s skipper KL Rahul and head coach Justin Langer. SRH’s opening duo made a mockery of LSG’s total of 165/4, chasing down the target in under 10 overs.
A player of such calibre KL Rahul needing to bear the wrath of the team owner on field in national media is depressing to say the least ! #pathetic
U guys are disappointed – we get it ! Talk it out in a team meeting behind closed doors fgs !
— Mahi (@mahiban4u) May 8, 2024
First, a 98-run loss against the Kolkata Knight Riders and now Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) chasing down 166 runs with 62 balls to spare. It was annihilation of the highest order and it seems that the owner of the franchise, Sanjiv Goenka was extremely disappointed with the same as he let his frustration out on the captain KL Rahul.
This is just pathetic from @LucknowIPL owner
Never saw SRH management with players on the field or even closer to dressing room irrespective of so many bad seasons and still face lot of wrath for getting involved. Just look at this @klrahul leave this shit next year #SRHvsLSG pic.twitter.com/6NlAvHMCjJ— SRI (@srikant5333) May 8, 2024
Goenka was almost scolding KL Rahul before the coach Justin Langer joined the ongoing animated one-sided conversation. Rahul was visibly uncomfortable and as soon as Langer came, he left. Goenka faced flak for his attitude as many reckoned that there was a way of showing disappointment and talking to players, which it wasn’t, especially not in the public eye when umpteen cameras were there on the field.
Experts also weighed in on the topic on Jio Cinema with the opinion that such conversations should happen behind closed doors and these images are never helpful for any team.
In the post-match presentation, KL Rahul was at a loss to describe SRH’s comfortable chase.
“Am lost for words. We have watched that kind of batting on TV. But this is unreal batting. Everything seemed to find the middle of the bat. Kudos to their skills. They have worked hard on their six-hitting skills,” KL Rahul said after the match.
“They didn’t give us a chance to know what the pitch played in the second innings. Was hard to stop them as they teed off from ball one,” he added.
KL Rahul said SRH would have chased 240 runs also considering how well they were striking the ball.
“Once you are on the losing side, there are question marks on the decisions taken. We were 40-50 runs short. When we lost wickets in the powerplay, we couldn’t get any momentum,” KL said.
“Ayush and Nicky batted well to get us to 166. But even if we would have got 240, they could have chased it as well,” he added.
