Yet another home team has been left frustrated by the pitch dished out by their curator. After they were beaten by eight wickets with 22 balls remaining in their first home game of the season, Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) mentor Zaheer Khan said it seemed the opposition had brought their own curator to prepare the pitch. This defeat tipped LSG's overall win-loss ratio at home to below 1. Ironically, among the active teams in the IPL, only their opponents on the night, Punjab Kings (PBKS), hold a worse win-loss ratio at home.
"What was a little disappointing for me here…" Zaheer said at the press conference. "Considering it's a home game and in IPL you've seen how teams have looked at taking a little bit of home advantage, from that point of view you've seen the curator is not really thinking that it's a home game. I think maybe it looked like, you know, it was Punjab curator out here.
"So that's something which we will figure. It's a new set-up also for me, but I hope that this is the first and the last game when it comes to that. Because you are disappointing the Lucknow fans as well. They've come up with so much expectations of winning the first home game here.
"As a team, we are confident. We accept that we've lost the game, and we have got to do whatever it takes to make that impact in the home leg. We still have six more games to go here, and this team has shown in the season so far, whatever little cricket is played, that we have the right outlook and the mindset to look at the IPL. What you can expect is innovation, out-of-the-box thinking, the fight, the hunger, and that sums us up as a team."
Struggling with injuries to their fast bowlers, LSG would perhaps have preferred a surface that assisted spin or at least didn't offer help to the PBKS seam attack. LSG played only two quicks for this match, one of them a last-minute inclusion in Shardul Thakur. They have only one overseas fast bowler in their whole squad, Shamar Joseph.
PBKS dominated LSG with their fast-bowling trio of Arshdeep Singh, Lockie Ferguson and Marco Jansen before adding two overs of Marcus Stoinis for good measure. Put together, they returned figures of 5 for 112 in 13 overs.
Zaheer called for more support for the home team. Asked if they might have misread the pitch in their first home game, Zaheer said: "That's what we are saying. We will go according to what the curator tells us. We are not using this as an excuse. We have seen during the last season that it's not like batters don't have to struggle here at times. All these things go on in cricket. But the way the home team should get support, everyone needs to know this is our home team that is playing in Lucknow and what can we do to help them win? Everyone's contribution is important. We will find a way anyway to win matches…"
Varun Aaron, Nick Knight and Matt Roller take the rapid fire
Even the captain Rishabh Pant suggested during the post-match presentation that they were expecting a slower pitch. They even left out seamer Prince Yadav for an extra spinner in M Siddharth. When asked about the unusual move of bowling three overs of spin in the powerplay, Pant said: "The idea was to get a slower wicket. We felt it's a home game, it's going to stop a little bit. I think the slower ones, when bowled into the wicket, were still sticking in but we weren't good enough on the day. We have got to learn and move forward. It is our first home game. Still assessing the conditions."
LSG are the third team to express frustration at the home conditions after Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Chennai Super Kings (CSK). KKR suggested they wanted more assistance for spin but that they didn't have any say. CSK, the team with the best win-loss ratio at home in all IPL, said they have been struggling to get a read on home conditions for two years now.