Sanjiv Goenka (L) and KL Rahul© X (formerly Twitter)
Lucknow Super Giants found themselves in the headlines during IPL 2024 following owner Sanjiv Goenka’s fiery chat with skipper KL Rahul after their huge loss against Sunrisers Hyderabad. LSG were completely outplayed by SRH as openers Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head chased down a 166-run target in just 9.4 overs. Goenka was not happy with his team’s performance and his animated conversation with Rahul and head coach Justin Langer soon became a topic of discussion among fans and experts. Former India batter Virender Sehwag weighed in on the incident and said that team owners should refrain from getting angry with players or backroom staff who work on the pitch.
“The owner’s role should be that when they meet the players in the dressing room or during a press meet, they should only talk to motivate them. But if the owner comes and asks – ‘What is going on? What’s the problem?’ or gets hold of one of the team management members and starts to raise questions about a particular player…see the coaches and the captain run the team, so it is better for these owners not to get involved with players or get angry with me,” he said on Cricbuzz.
Sehwag, who was the mentor for Punjab Kings from 2016 to 2018, was not pleased with how Goenka behaved and he also said that he will be earning a profit irrespective of what happens.
“These are all businessmen. They only understand profit and loss. But here, there is no loss, so what’s bothering them? You are earning a 400-crore profit. I mean, this is a business where you have to do nothing at all. You have guys to take care of that, and irrespective of what happens, you are earning profit. So your work should only be to motivate the players. What happens is that the player will think that there are other franchises in the IPL, if I leave, someone else will take me. And if you lose a player, your chances of winning are zero. When I left Punjab, they were fifth. They never came fifth in any other seasons,” he said.
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