Lucknow Super Giants are one of the three teams in the Indian Premier League who are yet to get their hands on the trophy, and head into the 2026 season with a rebrand and the hopes of forming a new identity.
They possess an incredibly powerful squad, one with all the batting talent in the world, and it is about making that unit click – but there will be serious questions over the form of several of their players.
Amongst these are captain Rishabh Pant, needing a bounce-back after a horror 2025 season. But also in the list is West Indian batter Nicholas Pooran, who had a hot-and-cold campaign last time out, and now enters the season with not a lot of runs under his belt.
Having retired from international cricket in 2025, Pooran has spent the last year bouncing around the globe playing in franchise leagues such as MLC, SA20, and the ILT20. However, despite this, he hasn’t been able to get consistent runs – and Ravichandran Ashwin theorised that a burn-out or simple exhaustion was the root cause of it.
Pooran’s campaign a tale of two halves
“When they bought Nicholas Pooran, he was probably the best T20 batter going around the circuit. But pay attention to how Pooran’s career has panned out, especially in the last 18 months, has been quite contrasting,” said Ashwin while previewing LSG’s season on his YouTube channel.
“Last year for LSG, in the first half he was scoring runs upon runs, taking the IPL by storm. In the second half, couldn’t score a run, and then his fortunes have started dipping. He goes anywhere to play a league, he can’t score runs,” said Ashwin. Pooran did score 524 runs in IPL 2025, but 400+ of those came in the first half, as he struggled to close out the season with the same incredible form.
Ashwin believes that not having the anchor of a West Indian role has cause some mental slippage and distraction, preventing him from producing his best.
“There is a reason – he stopped playing cricket for West Indies and became a freelancer. I was recently watching SA20 and he got out and was walking off, it looked like he lost energy in his entire body,” explained Ashwin. “There was literally nothing left in him.”
‘No attachment to the teams’
Ashwin indicated that this was the problem with players who opt to focus on the franchise leagues, which is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon: “This freelancing circuit is very unforgiving, their contracts are made and they go play, there is no attachment to the team or to the results. Apart from the fact you’re playing for pride and for good contracts, there is nothing to play for, and to me, it looks like Nicholas Pooran is a little bit burnt out,” said Ashwin.
The spinner did admit that Pooran is amongst the best talents in the IPL, but was wary of which version of Nicholas Pooran would join the LSG camp this summer: “I want to see what avatar of Pooran comes to the IPL, because he is a serious talent and it has not been shining bright.”
A Nicholas Pooran at the top of his game will certainly make any tournament he plays in that much more exciting to watch.