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Rajasthan Royals are on top of the table, but a win for LSG will close the gap to just two points

Karthik Krishnaswamy26-Apr-20244:04

Economy over wickets – Ashwin’s role at Royals this season?

Match details

Lucknow Super Giants (Fourth – P8, W5, L3) vs Rajasthan Royals (First – P8, W7, L1)
Lucknow, 7.30pm (2pm GMT)

Big picture

Form is a fickle thing in T20, but if there’s such a thing, LSG and RR are the two form teams of IPL 2024, the only two with two or more wins in a row leading up to their meeting in Lucknow. Both teams sit in the top four at the moment, and RR, who already have 14 points, could have one foot in the playoffs if they win on Saturday night.This is a contest between broadly similar teams: both have strong top orders and occasionally get into a muddle with middle-order roles, and both have excellent attacks with plenty of variety. It’s hard to pick a favourite. LSG have won three of their four home games so far this season, but RR are perfectly equipped to compete on whatever surface Ekana throws up, whether it’s slow and low black soil or true, bouncy red.Both teams are looking ominous if you go by the metric of key players finding form midway through the season. Yashasvi Jaiswal did so with a match-winning century in RR’s most recent game, against Mumbai Indians on April 22, and Marcus Stoinis matched him in LSG’s most recent game, against Chennai Super Kings on April 23.Everything points to a tight and tactically interesting contest, and if you need anything else to whet your appetite, there’s the prospect of Mayank Yadav returning to action.

Form guide

Lucknow Super Giants WWLLW (last five matches, most recent first)
Rajasthan Royals WWWLWYashasvi Jaiswal found form with a hundred in his previous game against MI•BCCI

Previous meeting

Both teams were playing their first match of IPL 2024 when they met in Jaipur on March 24. An unbeaten 82 from Sanju Samson led Royals to a total of 193, and LSG were in the hunt thanks to half-centuries from KL Rahul and Nicholas Pooran. It came down to a gettable 65 from 36 balls with both of them at the crease, but a terrific end-overs display led by Sandeep Sharma sealed a 20-run win for Royals.

Team news and impact player strategy

Lucknow Super Giants
Mayank Yadav, who has missed LSG’s last four matches with an abdominal issue, bowled in the nets in the lead-up to Saturday’s game. S Sriram, the team’s assistant coach, said Mayank is “pretty close” to a comeback. If he returns, Yash Thakur could make way for him. LSG have not used M Siddharth’s left-arm spin in recent games, but he remains an interesting option to come off the subs bench and take the new ball if needed.Likely XII 1 Quinton de Kock, 2 KL Rahul (capt & wk), 3 Marcus Stoinis, 4 , 5 Nicholas Pooran, 6 Deepak Hooda, 7 Ayush Badoni, 8 Krunal Pandya, 9 Matt Henry, 10 Ravi Bishnoi, 11 Mohsin Khan, 12 .Rajasthan Royals
Sandeep Sharma returned from injury and took match-turning figures of 5 for 18 in RR’s last match, against Mumbai Indians. He is likely to keep his place and share the new ball with Trent Boult. If a black-soil pitch is rolled out in Lucknow, there is a chance Royals could bring in Keshav Maharaj as their third spinner.Likely XII: 1 Yashasvi Jaiswal, 2 , 3 Sanju Samson (capt & wk), 4 Riyan Parag, 5 Shimron Hetmyer, 6 Rovman Powell, 7 Dhruv Jurel, 8 R Ashwin, 9 Trent Boult, 10 Avesh Khan, 11 Sandeep Sharma, 12 .

In the spotlight

Quinton de Kock has had a quiet IPL by his standards. He averages just 28.50 after eight innings, and while he’s made three fifties, all of them have come at strike rates below 145. LSG would love it if he found some of his old fluency, but the RR attack may present him a stern test: he has T20 strike rates of below 125 against all their key bowlers – Boult, Sandeep, Yuzvendra Chahal and R Ashwin.Marcus Stoinis also found form with a match-winning 63-ball 124 against CSK•BCCI

He’s taken just one wicket in seven matches this season, at an average of 240.00, but R Ashwin will tell you (as he has on his YouTube channel) that wicket-taking is becoming irrelevant in T20. He may be right on one hand, since his economy rate (8.88) is nearly identical to that of Yuzvendra Chahal (8.83), who happens to have taken 13 wickets this season. What is different and possibly worrying is that Ashwin hasn’t tied left-hand batters down to his usual extent: his economy rate of 8.68 against left-handers is his worst of any IPL season. LSG could have de Kock, Nicholas Pooran, Krunal Pandya and possibly Devdutt Padikkal in their top eight; can Ashwin dominate his favourite match-up like he’s done for so many years?

Pitch and conditions

Red soil or black soil? It’s the question to ask in the lead-up to every game in Lucknow, and it’s a potentially tricky one for the home side ahead of this game. LSG love controlling games with their spinners on black-soil pitches, but Royals come here with one of the best spin attacks in the competition.

Stats that matter

• Royals have won three of their four matches against LSG so far. The two teams have never met in Lucknow, however.
• Mayank Yadav has the best middle-overs economy rate (5.00) and average (7.00) of any bowler in IPL 2024 (minimum 30 balls bowled in that phase).
• Sanju Samson is five hits away from becoming the 10th member of the 200 sixes club in the IPL.

Quotes

“You’ve got to keep that white noise away. That’s the skill of really good teams. You can’t look too much at what others are doing. We have no control over that. We’ve got to turn up every day and be the best that we can be, and then, we’ll definitely qualify [for the playoffs] if we do that.”
“We’ve played eight matches and won seven of them, and in those seven matches we’ve had six different Man of the Match [winners]. So everyone in the team has been contributing. This is the biggest thing that wins matches. Whenever there’s a requirement, a different player [steps up]. It’s not like just one player is winning us games.”

In the weeks that followed the camp, Azam, Rizwan and Niazi all had their participation in the NZ series curtailed

Danyal Rasool28-Apr-2024PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi has defended his decision to have Pakistan’s players train with the military during the last few days of Ramzan, rejecting the claim the camp had anything to do with several players pulling up with muscle injuries.In the weeks that followed the squad’s training camp at Kakul, Pakistan’s most famous military training academy, Azam Khan, Mohammad Rizwan and Irfan Niazi all had their participation in the recently concluded home series against New Zealand curtailed. Azam was ruled out with a calf injury before the start of the series, while Rizwan and Niazi were sidelined with hamstring injuries after the third T20I.Naqvi bemoaned Pakistan players’ fitness as being “far behind” its peer nations. “Injuries never occur due to fitness training,” he said at the press conference the PCB had organised to announce Pakistan’s new head coaches. “People have got various theories around how to make players fit. Fitness has never been a focus of Pakistan managements in the past.”I am not criticising anyone that came before me but look at players from the rest of the world. Pakistan players’ fitness is well below that. This is just the start, we will have to ramp up player fitness even more. If I need to bring in fitness experts from around the world, I will.”Azhar Mahmood, who had coached Pakistan against New Zealand, and has now been appointed all-format assistant coach, said the injuries to those players took place while playing cricket. “Kakul training had nothing to do with cricket,” he said. “The injury the players sustained happened [while] playing cricket, and the training had to do with physical fitness. If the players were injured, they wouldn’t have played the first game. And Azam Khan was not injured before the series, he was injured in the nets.”Related

• Gillespie appointed Pakistan men's Test coach, Kirsten named white-ball coach

• Rizwan to miss remainder of New Zealand T20Is with hamstring injury

• Pakistan's cricketers set to train with army in March-April

• Pakistan slowdown: Babar on the defensive, but Shadab wants more 'impactful innings'

This robust defence is in line with the PCB’s keenness to maintain the army camp did not make a bad situation worse. When Rizwan, who retired hurt partway through his innings in the third T20I, and Niazi were ruled out of the New Zealand series, the PCB’s official statement did not refer to any injury at all, instead saying the board had opted to “rest” the duo after viewing their radiology reports.While it is true that intensive stress or training can lead to fatigue-related muscle injuries, the team management and the chairman appear to believe that fitter players are less likely to pick up such injuries, a view that is also in line with mainstream sports science.The PCB has maintained that any niggles picked up are short-term, with unavailability limited to a few days rather than weeks or months. Pakistan are now scheduled to go to Ireland and England to play 7 T20I games, and announce a preliminary World Cup squad before 1 May.The camp was the brainchild of Naqvi, who told the players during the PSL he organised it to get their fitness up to speed, and, in part, to help the players hit bigger sixes. “When I was watching the matches in Lahore, I don’t think a single one of you hit a six that went into the stands,” he had said. “Whenever a six like that was hit, I used to think a foreign player must have hit that. I have asked the board to make a plan that gets every player’s fitness up to speed. You’ll have to make a proper effort for that.”An intensive training regimen just a week after the PSL ended in the only window of what would otherwise have been rest did raise eyebrows. Naqvi acknowledged at the time there were very limited opportunities for such a camp, with Pakistan going into it on the back of six months of virtually non-stop cricket. Moreover, the camp coincided with the last phase of Ramzan, a time when most Pakistanis culturally tend to prioritise family or religious activities over work. Its effectiveness was made more challenging by the fact several of the squad players were fasting, with no food or water from sunrise to sunset, unconducive to a rigorous boot camp.There is, though, precedent for Pakistan cricket getting the military involved with training. Misbah-ul-Haq’s Pakistan famously organised a training camp with the military at Kakul academy before a Test series to England.When Misbah scored a hundred in the first Test, he celebrated by doing ten push-ups, followed by a military salute. The series was drawn 2-2, with Pakistan rising to the top of the Test rankings for the only time in their history.

‘I’ve been around long enough to know how it works,’ captain says, after emphatic win over Oman

ESPNcricinfo staff13-Jun-2024Jos Buttler, England’s captain, praised his players for blocking out the noise and focussing on the task of beating Oman in style, as the T20 World Cup defending champions produced a command performance that has put them back on course for Super Eight qualification.England needed a grand total of 99 deliveries to beat Oman in the first of two must-win matches in three days, with Buttler himself striking 24 not out from eight deliveries to hunt down a victory target of 48 in just 3.1 overs.In so doing, England transformed their net run-rate from -1.8 to +3.08, placing them ahead of Scotland’s figure of 2.16, meaning that they will progress at the Scots’ expense from a tightly contested Group B if there are no more upsets or washouts in the remaining fixtures.Though the speed of England’s chase was a key factor in the NRR boost, the match was set up by a thrilling bowling display, led by Adil Rashid’s 4 for 11, with Mark Wood and Jofra Archer both returning the excellent figures of 3 for 12.”I thought the tone was set really well by the bowlers,” Buttler said at the post-match presentations. “We managed to pick up those early wickets and restrict them and knock them off, so job done today and we’ve got another big game in two days’ time.”ESPNcricinfo Ltd

Asked if he had been surprised by the mood around England’s campaign, after one washed-out contest against Scotland and a poor display against Australia in Barbados, Buttler smiled and acknowledged that he’d seen it all before.”I’ve been around long enough to know how it works,” he told Nasser Hussain, who was conducting the post-match interviews. “How guys like you make some comments, so that’s fine. That’s part of your job. I don’t mind. We know what’s going on in the dressing room. We have lots of confidence in our team and we have another huge match to come.”That match is against Namibia on Saturday, at the same venue in Antigua, which ought to suit England’s bowling attack given the steep bounce on offer for the quick bowlers and the sharp spin that Rashid extracted in the course of his four superbly executed overs.”I thought they bowled brilliantly,” Buttler said. “[Reece] Topley with his height, Jofra Archer with that high release point as well. They were really challenging bowlers on that surface. I thought they bowled a really good line and length.Related

• Graeme Swann: 'If England are aggressive, they can win the tournament for Jos Buttler'

• Adil Rashid: 'When kids see me play, they know that it's possible'

• Jos Buttler: England must 'earn the right' to worry about net run-rate

• Matthew Mott hopes Josh Hazlewood's run-rate comments were 'tongue-in-cheek'

• England rip through outclassed Oman to win in 99 balls

“I don’t think any of us expected the wicket to probably play like it did,” he added. “It looked a really good surface. But yeah, [Rashid] found spin and obviously you know what a threat he is. He bowled fantastically well.”England’s run-chase was ignited by Phil Salt’s volley of two sixes from the first two balls – the first such instance in a T20I since Spain versus the Isle of Man in February 2023, and sealed 17 balls later by Jonny Bairstow’s second four in as many balls.”Just be ultra-positive,” Buttler said, when asked what his message to the batters had been. “We’ve spoken in the lead-up to this about we have to win games, and if we get a chance we have to try and take advantage with the net run-rate, and we managed to do that today.”We can only focus on ourselves. We’ve got a huge game against Namibia and all focus now is on that.”

ESPNcricinfo has learnt that Morne Morkel is the leading candidate to become India’s new bowling coach

ESPNcricinfo staff20-Jul-2024Former India allrounder Abhishek Nayar and former Netherlands allrounder Ryan ten Doeschate are set to join India’s support staff as assistant coaches for the upcoming white-ball tour of Sri Lanka. The pair will reunite with newly-appointed India head coach Gautam Gambhir, having recently served as his assistant coaches during Kolkata Knight Riders’ run to the IPL 2024 title.ESPNcricinfo has learnt that former South Africa fast bowler Morne Morkel has been approached to become India’s new bowling coach. Morkel had worked with Gambhir at Lucknow Super Giants and Durban’s Super Giants in the SA20, where Gambhir was the global mentor.Related

• Morne Morkel appointed India's bowling coach

• 'Trust, freedom, success' – Gambhir lays out his coaching philosophy

• Harshit Rana credits Gambhir for his success 'above everyone else'

• Where does the elevation of Gill and Suryakumar leave Hardik?

• Axar: When the team needs someone to stand up, they bank on me to deliver

Former India and Karnataka seamer Vinay Kumar has also been shortlisted for the bowling coach role, but Morkel is understood to be the leading candidate.The new coaching set-up’s first assignment will be a white-ball tour of Sri Lanka, comprising three ODIs and three T20Is, which begins on July 27.Nayar, 40, played three ODIs for India and won multiple Ranji Trophy titles with Mumbai in his first-class career, which spanned over 100 matches. Even when he was an active player, Nayar mentored Dinesh Karthik and helped him stage an international comeback. More recently, mystery spinner Varun Chakravarthy heaped praise on Nayar after KKR won their first IPL title in ten seasons. Nayar has also worked as the head coach of Trinbago Knight Riders in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL).As for ten Doeschate, he is currently with Los Angeles Knight Riders in the USA’s Major League Cricket as an assistant to head coach Phil Simmons. He also brings with him the experience of having been a batting coach at Kent.

Former India coach had captained and mentored RR previously in the IPL

Nagraj Gollapudi04-Sep-20247:30

Will coach Dravid’s India experience make a difference at Royals?

Rahul Dravid is set to return to Rajasthan Royals (RR) as head coach ahead of the 2025 IPL season, following the culmination of his tenure as India coach after the 2024 T20 World Cup win in June this year.ESPNcricinfo has learned that Dravid recently signed a deal with the franchise and has had initial conversations on player retentions ahead of the upcoming mega auction. He has a long-standing working relationship with the RR captain Sanju Samson, who came through the under-19 ranks on Dravid’s watch.Dravid has history with RR. He was their captain in IPL 2012 and 2013, and served as team director and mentor in the 2014 and 2015 seasons. In 2016, Dravid moved to Delhi Daredevils (now Delhi Capitals) until he became the head of the National Cricket Academy in Bengaluru in 2019. In 2021, he was appointed head coach of the India men’s team and ended his three-year stint with their first ICC title in 11 years.ESPNcricinfo Ltd

RR are also likely to sign former India batter Vikram Rathour as one of Dravid’s assistant coaches. Rathour, a former India selector, was part of Dravid’s coaching staff at NCA before he became India’s batting coach in 2019.It is understood that while Dravid will take charge of Rajasthan Royals in the IPL, Kumar Sangakkara, who has been their director of cricket since 2021, will continue with their franchise and look after their teams in other leagues – Paarl Royals in the SA20 and Barbados Royals in the CPL.RR have not won the IPL title since the inaugural season in 2008; their next best finish was in 2022 when they came runners-up to Gujarat Titans. They failed to make the playoffs in 2023, finishing fifth in the league despite a terrific start to the season, but did so in 2024 and were knocked out in Qualifier 2.

Bist and Hasabnis’ fifties for India A go in vain as visitors collapse from 176 for 3 to 218 all out

ESPNcricinfo staff16-Aug-2024Maddy Darke’s unbeaten 106 along with Katie Mack’s 68 set up Australia A’s eight-wicket victory over India A in the second one-dayer in Mackay. The openers added 131 as Australia A chased down India A’s 219 with ease to take an unassailable 2-0 lead in the three-match series.Having been put into bat, Raghvi Bist and Tejal Hasabnis hit fifties helping India A fight back with a 124-run stand for the fourth wicket. But Charli Knott and Grace Parsons triggered a collapse as the visitors slumped from 176 for 3 to 218 all out.The game started with Tayla Vlaeminck’s superb opening spell of 4-3-3-1 where she had Priya Punia caught behind. Nicola Hancock replaced Vlaeminck and dismissed Shweta Sehrawat in her first over before Knott sent back Shubha Satheesh for a 38-ball 24.Bist and Hasabnis started slowly before picking boundaries in overs from Parsons and Kate Peterson. They focused on rotating the strike in the middle overs and eased past fifties. But India’s acceleration was cut short by Parsons having Hasabnis caught and bowled and Knott having Minnu Mani caught behind in successive overs.Shipra Giri got going with a couple of fours but with Bist getting run out in the 45th over, India slipped to 203 for 6. Maitlan Brown cleaned up the tail in a triple-wicket maiden over, which included a run out, as India were bowled out in 48 overs.Mack and Darke were aided by wides and a couple of threes from Soppadhandi Yashasri and Sayali Satghare’s opening spells as Australia A coasted past fifty in the 11th over. Between overs eight and 16, every single one went for at least five as Mack reached fifty in the 16th over. Darke reached hers in the 21st over with Australia A on 121 for 0.Satghare trapped Mack lbw in the 23rd over but Darke carried on. Her 38-run stand with Knott included just one boundary but brought the asking rate well under three. Tahlia McGrath hitting four boundaries in her first 15 balls quashed the little chances for a visitors’ comeback and allowed Darke to complete a century in the 37th over. The duo stayed unbeaten to take Australia A home with 58 balls to spare.Australia A had swept the T20I series 3-0 and have the chance to repeat the feat in the ODIs at the Gold Coast on Monday.