Rishabh Pant's Bizarre Logic For Coming To Bat At No.7 In Last Over vs DC: "To Capitalise..."

A dejected Rishabh Pant sounded hardly convincing as he explained the rationale behind coming in to bat as low as number seven, promoting the likes of Abdul Samad in his team's eight-wicket thrashing at the hands of Delhi Capitals on Tuesday. Batting first, LSG managed only 159 for 6 with Pant scoring a duck coming in at No.7 with only two balls remaining in the innings. The promotion of Samad backfired as he managed only 2 off 8 balls.

"The idea was to like capitalise. We sent Samad to capitalise on a wicket like that. After that (David) Miller came in and we just got stuck in the wicket. Eventually, these are the things we've got to figure out and try to find our best combination going forward," the skipper said, hardly able to put forth a satisfactory explanation for his tactical harakiri during the post-match presentation ceremony.

He felt the toss played a big part in LSG's loss as the team batting second always got a better pitch to bat on compared to the one making first use of the wicket.

"We knew we were 20 runs short. Toss played a big part. Whoever is bowling first, they get a lot of help from the wicket. We just had to stay back, we couldn't get it away.

"It always happens in Lucknow, the wicket gets better and better to bat on, that's how the game goes and you can't be complaining. Yes, toss is playing a huge part, but we are not looking for excuses," he explained.

It also seemed like the LSG are complicating the strategy by trying to use Mayank Yadav as an impact sub for Ayush Badoni, something they haven't been able to do as of now.

"That is one idea (Mayank as impact sub), why we are 'impacting' Ayush, to get Mayank some game time, just trying to find ways to get him early in the season because it's