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Lucknow Super Giants owner Sanjeev Goenka having a heated conversation with captain KL Rahul after his team lost to Sunrisers Hyderabad by 10 wickets with 62 balls has taken IPL by storm. So, what if LSG won the toss and couldn’t score beyond 164 and, thereafter, faced an embarrassing defeat in the hands of SRH? It’s part of the game. What else?
The commentators kept saying that this kind of animated conversation shouldn’t happen in public spaces. It’s completely a closed-door affair. But who cares? An animated Goenka, who is paying a franchise fee of over Rs 7K crore to BCCI, isn’t making much money from IPL, and is known to have a short-fuse when it comes to losing matches, is seen talking very disgracefully with almost a speechless Rahul.
The LSG owner is such a bad sport that he can’t keep his emotions under comtrol for later stages. Poor KL Rahul was also in shock after his team’s defeat and then the owner coming and charging at him in this fashion shows the dark side of IPL riches.
Of course, Goenka is a rich man but his behaviour was ‘uncouth’ – uncalled for. Who would forget the way his group treated MS Dhoni after his team couldn’t qualify in the 2016 IPL and also removed the Indian legend from captaincy? The Goenka group was so careless that he wasn’t even keen to give the team at the auction which Dhoni wanted. It came to such a pass that Dhoni was made to play under Steve Smith in the 2017 season. That year, his Pune team did play the final but lost to Mumbai by a close margin.
The Goenka were out since then as they came as one of the replacement teams from Pune in the absence of CSK and RR who were serving a two-year ban. The Goenka group in between tried negotiating with Rajasthan Royals for a while till a phone call from former IPL czar Lalit Modi petrified them completely. They called the high and mighty of BCCI to know as to why he got a call from Modi.
More than three years ago, they again entered the IPL family and were in the play-off in the last two seasons. In this too, LSG looked like a formidable side and looked good to give a tough fight for money against top-ranked teams till a one-sided encounter against SRH happened and smashed their hope for good, at least, the body language of Goenka suggested that.
In other words, Goenka’s behavior was disrespectful to the cricket fraternity. His complete disregard for a sober Indian cricketer Rahul must push BCCI to take some steps to protect the sanctity of its contracted players. Not to forget that Rahul could be the future Indian ODI captain of India after Rohit Sharma. So, this behavior is even more appalling. Whatever little chance LSG had as a team to qualify for the knock-out stage has gone up in smoke. It also looks certain that LSG won’t get the services of Rahul next after what Goenka did today.
But what did Goenka do? Is there any proof to suggest that Rahul was insulted by his team owner? Are we speculating a lot? Does Goenka have full rights to question his captain for not playing with intent?
If Goenka needs to question someone, he needs to do that conversation with his team coach Justin Langer and ask him why the Aussie didn’t consider a player like Kyle Mayers, who scored 379 runs from 13 matches with four fifties. Why Mayers is yet to get a game for LSG? Just to promote the Aussie players, is Langer ignoring a deserving candidate like Mayers? Goenka must be aware of the surroundings and that is the reason he has found a soft target in KL Rahul and this may lead to a bigger battle between them!
