Mentor Zaheer Khan parts ways with Lucknow Super Giants

Lucknow Super Giants' team mentor Zaheer Khan has parted ways with the franchise after just one season. ESPNcricinfo has learned that Zaheer informed LSG of his decision on Thursday.

The main reason for Zaheer quitting, it is understood, is that his vision for the franchise did not align with that of head coach Justin Langer and team owner Sanjeev Goenka. While Zaheer's relationship with captain Rishabh Pant remains strong, he was affected by the cluttered thinking, which played a role in LSG sliding down the points table in the second half of IPL 2025.

Zaheer had joined LSG in August 2024, filling the vacancy left by Gautam Gambhir's exit after IPL 2023. Gambhir had taken up the mentor role at Kolkata Knight Riders for IPL 2024 and has since become head coach of the India men's team. Before that, Zaheer was with Mumbai Indians from 2018 to 2022. He had agreed to a two-year contract with LSG and had taken charge of scouting, planning and strategy.

Having made the playoffs in their first two years in the IPL, 2022 and 2023, LSG could not reach the knockouts in the last two seasons. In 2025, they finished seventh with six wins from 14 games. It was a season of two contrasting halves: in the first eight matches, LSG had five wins but they managed just one more win in their last six games. Of the eight games they played at their home ground, the Ekana Stadium, they won only two.

LSG had made the headline at the mega auction when they bought Pant for INR 27 crore (USD 3.2 million approx.), making him the most expensive player ever in the IPL. The team was built around him, but Zaheer quickly put in place the building blocks he felt could become stronger every season. Despite there being a lot of chatter about Pant to open, Zaheer spoke to the talismanic keeper-batter early on and told him that the better strategy would be to have Mitchell Marsh open with Aiden Markram. That strategy, Zaheer impressed on both Pant and the leadership group, would reduce the burden on their best batter, Nicholas Pooran, who was anointed as No. 3.

The role clarity allowed the batters to play with freedom and perform consistently. Markram had never opened in the IPL before, while Marsh, despite having been around in the IPL for more than a decade, had never made a major impact. Yet the move worked: Marsh was the fifth-leading run-getter with 627 runs at a strike rate of 163.70, Pooran made 524 runs at 196.25 and Markram 445 at 148.82.