Rishabh Pant has struggled with the bat and in captaincy as well for LSG.
Former Australia captain Aaron Finch has advised Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) captain Rishabh Pant to give up wicketkeeping duties to Nicholas Pooran and focus only on being the captain. This comes after LSG lost to Punjab Kings by 37 runs in Dharamshala in the ongoing IPL 2025.
He has only scored 128 runs in 11 matches, with a strike rate of 99.22. The enormous INR 27 crore price tag has put further strain on him. The LSG's hat-trick of defeats in the last three matches has made matters worse for him.
Their recent performance has been influenced by their overreliance on Nicholas Pooran with the bat. LSG appeared strong on the points table in the early stages, when Pooran was firing on all cylinders and had the Orange Cap, but they have since dropped to seventh place.
Aaron Finch, the former Australian captain, has provided Pant some advice. He instructed him to pass over the wicketkeeping duties to Pooran.
He described the reason for his advice, which is to allow more time for discussion between the bowlers and Pant. The stop-clock rule requires the fielding side to begin a new over within 60 seconds of completing the previous one.
"It must be really difficult to captain a side when you're the wicketkeeper. The communication between you and your bowlers - you probably get a couple of seconds. Obviously, there's a lot of emphasis on the clock between overs, but you might have 10, 15 seconds to chat to your bowler between overs," Finch said on JioStar.
Pooran, according to Finch, is currently acting as a liaison between Pant and the bowler, conveying signals between them. He further claimed that Pant appeared irritated and animated on the field after the plans were not completed well.
"So then it falls on Nicholas Pooran, who's probably somewhere in front of the wicket, to then start relaying messages as well. That can be really difficult - to really commit to a plan - because the bowler's thinking might change ball to ball, and so might Rishabh's. You can see just how animated and frustrated he is right throughout," he added.
Finch pointed out the T20 game has gotten faster and its no longer possible for keeper-captain to communicate with his bowlers every time. He cited Shreyas Iyer and Shubman Gill as examples of effective captains who maintain constant communication with their bowlers.
"So, maybe it's an opportunity where he says, 'Right, Pooran, you just take the gloves for a game or two. I just need to get some rhythm, get some communication with my attack, so we can start to plan and manage our way through the twenties just that little bit better.' Because the communication breakdown when you're behind the stumps is really, really difficult. But the game's changed a bit since then, I reckon. The game is so much faster now. One or two balls can swing the whole momentum of a game, so I think you need that constant communication with your bowler. Often, Shreyas Iyer is at mid-off, Shubman Gill is at mid-on - there are guys there all the time," Finch concluded.
LSG will be in action on May 9 when they face Royal Challengers Bengaluru in Lucknow.