IPL Franchise owner of Lucknow Super Giants Sanjiv Goenka speaks on Wednesday KL Rahul and his future with the team-stays, “Why not”? Goenka, however, was a little clear on player retention and the captaincy for the next IPL season.
Sanjiv Goenka other than Khan was actively involved in a heated discussion with Rahul in the last IPL season where the topic of rebuttal was the loss to Sunrisers Hyderabad. The focus shifted to whether the wicketkeeper-batsman would like to stay in team questions.
The owners of the team had a meeting with Rahul lately in their metropolis of Kolkata.
“I have had a series of meetings with Kuala Lumpur for 3 years already. Therefore, I do not understand why this meeting causes so much interest. There were no calls taken as I said before the reservation rules came into being,” Sanjiv Goenka told the reporters while appointing Zaheer Khan as their team mentor.
“But KL has been a part of the family from the time LSG was built as a team to today. He has been of a lot of importance. He is one of the family members and will be always group member.”
There was a question regarding player retention and captaincy to Goenka to which he said that they just deciding on it and hoping BCCI will come out with guidelines on retention.
“There are still the months of September, October and November to take a decision. Let the policy come out. The future of the team, whether the total number of reservations will be 3 or 4 or 5 or 6, we have not even thought about t. I know nothing,” Sanjiv Goenka said.
“Let’s see there is enough time, so little by little. Deciding something today will have consequences on our medium-term future, this is why it needs to be carefully designed and thought over.”
“There is more than enough time, so there is no need rush. Let BCCI declare the policy first followed by a conversation.”
Attending his first press conference and asked whether they would hit ‘reset mode’ under newly appointed mentor Zaheer Khan, he said: “You are always trying and improving, it is a continual effort.”
“People don’t know what’s going to happen next. Obviously coach (Justin Langer) will continue, Lance Klusener (assistant coach), Jordy Rhodes (fielding coach) will continue. We are very happy about Mo En Morkel and Gautam Gambhir and very latest about their joining the Indian team,” Sanjiv Goenka said.
In the first two seasons, Rahul guided LSG to the playoffs but the general opinion was that there was more to Gambhir’s leadership than what met the eye and this became fully apparent in the season, when They didn’t make it to the Final four.
