Shardul Thakur defended Lucknow Super Giants’ bowling unit and criticised commentators for unfair judgment after their win over Gujarat Titans.
Star India and Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) all-rounder Shardul Thakur has strongly defended his team’s bowling performance in the ongoing IPL 2025 season, taking a veiled dig at commentators for their criticism.
Speaking at the post-match press conference following LSG’s win over Gujarat Titans, Shardul highlighted that the team has performed well with the ball and called out critics who overlook the challenges bowlers face on high-scoring pitches.
“I’ve always believed that, as a bowling unit, we’ve bowled well throughout the season. A lot of times in commentary, there’s criticism; they try to be hard on the bowlers. But you have to understand that cricket is moving in a certain direction where 200+ scores are becoming more common,” Shardul said.
Shardul, who went unsold in the IPL 2025 mega-auction, later joined Lucknow as a replacement for injured pacer Mohsin Khan. Since then, he has been an important part of their bowling unit. In the match against Gujarat, he picked up two wickets, dismissing Sherfane Rutherford and Rahul Tewatia for golden ducks.
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“Like you said, criticism will always be there, especially from commentators. It’s easy to sit in a studio and comment on someone’s bowling, but they don’t see the real picture out there on the ground,” he added. With the victory, Lucknow Super Giants climbed to the third spot on the points table with eight points from six matches and a net run rate of +0.16. Shardul credited the team’s ability to defend totals despite flat tracks.
“Credit to us that we’ve defended scores on two occasions when we batted first. We put up a good score, the pitch became better for batting and even with drastic changes, we managed to defend, one game by 10 runs, one by 4 runs in Kolkata,” he said.
In the match, Gujarat opener Sai Sudharsan got off to a quick start, driving Shardul’s short-pitched delivery to backward point for a boundary on the first ball. Along with skipper Shubman Gill, he maintained an aggressive run rate during the powerplay, scoring boundaries in almost every over. Jos Buttler, however, failed to make an impact and was dismissed by Digvesh Rathi. Shardul came close to a hat-trick in the final over but narrowly missed out.
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