LSG finished at 10th spot in IPL 2026 under RIshabh Pant and Justin Langer.
Following a dismal last-place finish in the Indian Premier League (IPL 2026), Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) owner Sanjiv Goenka has hinted at a significant reorganization of the team's backroom coaching staff.
He claimed that one of the things he learned during the previous IPL season was that the language barrier prevents foreign coaches from effectively communicating with the Indian players.
Lance Klusener of South Africa is the assistant coach, Kane Williamson of New Zealand is the mentor, Justin Langer of Australia is the head coach of LSG, and Tom Moody is the global director of cricket.
However, this bloated staff has brought some criticism as well, as ex-captain Rishabh Pant, who has been traded to Delhi Capitals, spoke multiple times about dealing with ‘too many’ voices.
“Eventually, a team might look very good on paper. If it doesn’t click, the team doesn’t do well. If an average team on paper clicks, it does very well. Honestly, we haven’t sat down with the coaches yet. A review is yet to be done. The Hundred will finish soon; after that, we will do it. Then we will conclude what happened, why it happened, and what mistakes we shouldn’t repeat.
But our batting is also good. Bowling is also good. Last year, our batting clicked, and bowling flopped. This year, our bowling clicked, and batting flopped. So, something needs to be reset. What exactly needs to be done? We have Tom Moody, Kane Williamson, and Justin Langer. We need to talk to them. We need to do a review and then come to a decision on what to do,” LSG owner Sanjiv Goenka said on the Shubhankar Mishra podcast.
Goenka acknowledged that there was a linguistic barrier between the primarily Indian team and the foreign coaches.
“It does cause issues… This is one of my learnings: international coaches are not able to communicate effectively with our Indian kids. They understand the cricketing language, but they don’t understand what goes beyond that. So, this is something that might need to be corrected moving forward," he added.
LSG had made it into the IPL playoffs in both of their first two IPL seasons in 2022 and 2023 under KL Rahul’s captaincy. However, since IPL 2024, LSG has finished 7th twice and 10th in IPL 2026.