Pant: LSG haven't played '40 overs of good cricket' all season

Rishabh Pant was focused on capitalising on his good start, which he hadn't been able to do successfully in the previous matches in IPL 2025, on his way to 118 not out off 61 balls against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in the last league match of the season. But, despite putting up 227, Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) went on to lose the match, which Pant said was a result of them not being able to play "40 overs of good cricket".

"Definitely, I was feeling well with each and every match", Pant said on the broadcast after the match. "But sometimes, it just doesn't come off. But today, I made sure that if I'm starting well, I should make a big one, like all the experienced players do; learning from the best always - whenever you get a start, try to make it [as] big as possible."

Pant has had an underwhelming season with the bat, coming into the game with just 151 runs in 12 innings. He said he made a conscious choice to hit straight, something he was unable to do earlier in the season.

"I was trying to play the field, how they were going to bowl on this wicket, so definitely that [hitting straight] was something I kept in mind," he said. "Just playing through the line, just looking for the gaps, kept it very simple, and played every ball with the same intensity throughout the innings."

LSG's inexperienced bowling attack was taken down, with Will O'Rourke and Shahbaz Ahmed going for 113 runs in seven overs. Unforced errors in the field and a back-foot no-ball from Digvesh Rathi, which offered a life to Player-of-the-Match Jitesh Sharma, all added up and took away the advantage that LSG carried into the chase.

"Eventually, you have to play 40 overs of good cricket, 20 overs will definitely not save you in a T20 game, and that's been our story," Pant said. "There were lot of injury concerns before the tournament, you can see that that is something that hurt us going through the season."

LSG finished seventh on the points table with six wins in 14 games. Pant did note positives with the ball but conceded that they let games slip.

"There have been some special bowling performances also," he said. "Digvesh Rathi is one of them, Avesh [Khan] bowled some crucial overs. Akash Singh and Akash Deep also did. Like I said, we have been getting chances, but we wouldn't be [weren't] able to maintain it for a longer period of time and that is just costing us the match."