Lucknow Super Giants' Justin Langer issues warning in regard to Rishabh Pant: 'Champions, they don't stay down for long'

The head coach says LSG captain Rishabh Pant is firing on all cylinders ahead of the 19th season of the Indian Premier League (IPL).

Updated on: Mar 15, 2026, 06:14:42 IST

Written by Prateek Srivastava

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Rishabh Pant hasn't had the last couple of years as fruitful as a result of an unsatisfactory show with the bat. He got odd good innings here and there, but he has failed to make any real impressions. India lost 3-1 in Australia, and he was part of that. India lost to New Zealand and South Africa at home, and he was part of that. On the Indian Premier League (IPL) front, things haven't been great for him either.

Pant struggled for LSG last season. (AFP)

He joined Lucknow Super Giants last year for a whopping ₹27 crore, but his performance as captain as well as a player left a lot to be desired. That the franchise finished seventh on the table made things worse for him.

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Pant now appears to have been sidelined from ODIs and T20Is. Sanju Samson and Ishan Kishan have really increased their stock in the last couple of weeks. In the recently concluded T20 World Cup that India won this past Sunday, Samson was Player of the Tournament, while Kishan also piled on the runs in India's thumping win.

In ODIs, KL Rahul has been India's preferred wicket-keeper batsman of late. Injuries too have affected Pant. That means Test cricket and the IPL are all Pant has at the moment.

In this gloom, Pant has the backing of his head coach

Against that backdrop, the 2026 IPL could be a make-or-break season for the left-hander. The good thing is that the head coach at the franchise, Australian Justin Langer, has full faith in him. Langer believes Pant is a champion player, and champion players can't be in the doldrums for long.

“He'll be ready to go. He's training at the moment. We've got a camp going on at the moment, so I'll see him in a couple of days. He's firing, and as I said, with all champions, they don't stay down for long. His last game last year in the IPL, we saw how brilliant he can be, so that's our expectation for him this year,” Langer told ESPNCricinfo.

The league kicks off on March 28; however, LSG will play their first match on April 1 at home against Delhi Capitals, Pant's former IPL team. Pant recently spent some time with India great Yuvraj Singh in Mumbai to improve his game on all fronts. Hopefully, all his efforts to become relevant again will bear fruit soon.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Prateek Srivastava
Prateek Srivastava is a senior sports journalist having been in the profession for two decades now. He started his print career with the India Today Group and later also worked for the Asian Age. In 2009, sensing the wind of change, he switched to the digital media and joined Mobile ESPN. There, he covered the 2011 Cricket World Cup and 2010 Hockey World Cup as a venue reporter. He did plenty of voice-over work too, over there. After leaving Mobile ESPN, Prateek went on to work for Cricketnext, Gocricket and Cricbuzz. At Gocricket (Times Internet Limited), he covered the 2014 T20 World from Bangladesh. There he also received a team leadership award, given at the end of the month. Prateek has also covered the 2016 T20 World Cup in India, this time working for Sportz Interactive. He also worked for Chinese giants Alibaba over two years and led their ""Short News"" content team at UC Browser. While cricket is Prateek’s expertise, he has also done a lot of golf. In fact, he has covered India’s first two European Tour events back in the late noughties. He has also done extensive writing on football having been associated with the Indian Super League for three seasons. Finally, Prateek is a literature aficionado and swears by Philip Roth and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and when he doesn’t joke, he is usually quiet and at work.Read More

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