A new era has been ushered in with the Lucknow Super Giants as the IPL franchise has hired former World Cup winner and Indian pacer Zaheer Khan as the new team mentor for the upcoming 2025 season of the IPL.
Zaheer shall be filling in the role left open after the departure of Indian team’s head coach Gautam Gambhir when he parted ways to rejoin his beloved KRR befoer IPL 2024.
This won’t be his first stint in managerial/coaching roles though. From 2018 to 2022, Zaheer was involved with the Mumbai Indians (MI), first as director of cricket and then head of global development. Prior to that, he was part of three IPL teams as a player – MI, Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Delhi Daredevils.
Goenka was hesitant to spill the beans on KL Rahul’s future with the Lucknow franchise, stating that he wanted to avoid speculation of any sort.
“Look, I’ve been meeting KL regularly over last three years. I’m a little surprised this meeting got so much attention. As I’ve said we have not taken any call till the retention rules are out,” Goenka told reporters while unveiling Zaheer Khan as their team mentor.
“But KL has been an integral and important part of the LSG family since inception. He’s played a very important role. He’s like family and will be family,” he added.
Rahul was signed by LSG for Rs 17 crore ahead of the IPL 2022 mega auction, and he led the franchise in the last three editions of the cash-rich league.
However, after his animated chat with LSG owner Sanjeev Goenka in IPL 2024 went viral on the internet, there were reports that he would leave the franchise.
But in fact, the decisions regarding captaincy and retention have barely been made, and Goenka is not fretting over the same already, as the LSG owner believes that time is well on their side.
“We have all of September, October and November to decide that. Let the policies be out. We have not even thought about the team going forward, whether retention will be three-four-five or six, we have no clue,” Goenka said.
“Let us see, there is enough time, so bit by bit. Whatever decisions we take today will impact us for the medium term future, so it has to be very well thought out and considered. There is enough time for it so it’s too early. Let the BCCI announce the policy first, then there will be discussions,” he added.
Asked whether they are going to press the ‘reset mode’ under the newly-appointed mentor Zaheer, he said,
“You always try and improve and that is a constant endeavour. When you have a mega auction, there is bound to be a reset but you want to retain the core as much as possible you can. Let’s see how it goes.”
“One doesn’t know which way what goes. Certainly the coach (Justin Langer) continues, Lance Kluesener (assistant coach), Jonty Rhodes (fielding coach) also continue. We are delighted for Morne Morkel and Gautam Gambhir, very pleased they have joined the national team,” he added.
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