By Prakash Nair 
Lucknow, April 12: Shubman Gill won the toss, looked at the Ekana pitch for a moment, and chose to bowl. No hesitation. No drama. Just a captain backing his read of a surface that has chewed up batting lineups before, and will likely do so again tonight.
Whether that call looks smart or reckless by the end of the evening depends almost entirely on what LSG captain Rishabh Pant’s side does with the bat in the next two hours. Because if there is one thing IPL 2026 has already taught us about Lucknow Super Giants, it is that they are not the kind of team you want to give a target to. Not right now. Not with the way they are feeling about themselves.
The Team That Refuses to Lose
Two games. Two last-ball wins. Both from situations where every sane observer had written them off.
The most recent one, just three days ago at Eden Gardens, was the kind of match that makes cricket fans question everything they think they know about probability. LSG were chasing 182 against the Kolkata Knight Riders. By the 16th over, they were 128 for 7. Seven wickets down. Big names Mitchell Marsh, Aiden Markram, Rishabh Pant, Nicholas Pooran, and Ayush Badoni are all gone. The match was effectively over. KKR’s players were probably already thinking about recovery sessions.
And then Mukul Choudhary happened.
The 21-year-old had come in at 104 for 5 in the 13th over and watched things fall apart around him. He was on 2 off eight balls at one point. What came next was not calculated. It was not textbook. It was the kind of batting you see maybe once or twice in a season pure, irrational self-belief translating into clean, violent contact. Seven sixes. Two fours. 54 not out off 27 balls at a strike rate of 200. Sixteen runs off the 19th over, 14 off the last. LSG won off the final delivery.
LSG coach Justin Langer had said before the season that Choudhary had the potential to become the scariest finisher in India. Three games in, it is beginning to look less like hype and more like prophecy.
Before Choudhary, it was Ayush Badoni holding things together a measured 54 off 34 balls, taking 26 runs in two overs off the weaker links in KKR’s attack, keeping the equation alive when almost everyone else had surrendered to it.
That is two players, both in their mid-twenties, doing things seasoned internationals could not. That is not luck. That is a squad with real depth and real nerve.
What the Gujarat Titans Brought From Delhi
Four days before LSG’s heist at Eden Gardens, the Gujarat Titans were involved in their own finishing act, though this one was about defending rather than chasing.
Jos Buttler made 52 off 27 balls, Shubman Gill scored 70, and Washington Sundar in his 70th IPL appearance, finally hit his maiden half-century, making 55 off 32 to push GT to 210 for 4. It was the first time all three of those batters had clicked in the same innings this season. When GT bat like that, they are a different proposition altogether.
But then came the chase, and with it, the kind of stomach-drop drama that DC supporters will be replaying in their heads for weeks.
David Miller had to retire hurt mid-innings with a bruised finger, but came back when DC needed 51 off 21 balls. He launched into Mohammed Siraj 6, 4, 6 in the 19th over, collecting 19 runs. With 13 needed off the last over, a DC win looked more than possible. KL Rahul had already made 92 before nicking off in the 17th over. There was enough belief in that DC dressing room, enough runs still required, enough drama still left.
Prasidh Krishna held his nerve. Miller missed a slower delivery on the penultimate ball, and when Kuldeep Yadav was run out attempting a bye, GT had won by a single run, the smallest margin of victory in their IPL history.
Rashid Khan’s 3 for 17 won him the Player of the Match award. That spell, bowling into a pitch that gripped and turned just enough in the middle overs, was the reason GT kept DC under 180 for long enough to matter.
History Says LSG, But GT Has Found Something
The head-to-head numbers make for interesting reading. In seven IPL meetings, GT lead 4-3. But those numbers obscure what is actually happening right now. All four of GT’s wins came in 2022 and 2023, against a different LSG squad entirely. Since April 2024, LSG has won three meetings in a row.
More specifically, they have done it by targeting the same weakness every time GT’s middle order. The pattern is nearly identical across those three encounters. GT start well, lose a key wicket in the 12th or 13th over, and the middle order, capable on paper, fragile in practice, does not see it through. That is not a coincidence. That is a formula, and LSG’s coaching staff will have it printed and pinned up somewhere.
That said, GT’s win over DC felt different. Sundar’s fifty gave them a second strike option in the middle overs for the first time this season. Gill captained calmly. Rashid was Rashid. That win gave the Titans a timely lift, and this Lucknow game now shapes up as the important one the match that will tell us whether the DC result was a genuine turning point or just a brief reprieve.
The Match-Ups That Will Decide the Night
You could talk about team strategy all evening, but this game will come down to a handful of individual duels. That is T20 cricket. That is just the truth of it.
Rashid Khan versus Rishabh Pant. Rashid has taken 9 wickets against LSG across all IPL meetings. Pant, batting at three this season, was dismissed for a duck against SRH but returned with a crucial fifty against DC. He is a batter who does not have neutral performances it is either match-defining or nothing. Against Rashid on a wearing Ekana pitch, the contest will be everything.
Jos Buttler versus Mohammed Shami. Buttler has rediscovered his best T20 instincts this season after an extended lean run in the format. Shami, bowling with something close to his pre-injury authority, has been almost unplayable in powerplay overs this season, with an economy of 4.62, 2 for 9 against SRH. One of them blinks early, and it sets the tone for 35 overs.
Mukul Choudhary versus whatever GT throws at him in the death. GT’s death bowling has been their most visible vulnerability, leaking 11 off the last over against Punjab Kings and then needing a miracle ball from Prasidh in the final delivery against DC. If tonight gets tight again in the last four overs, Choudhary is the name GT’s bowlers are most afraid of right now.
And do not sleep on Prince Yadav. The credit after the KKR game went to Choudhary, but Yadav’s early spell, hitting right lengths, keeping the scoring down, set the conditions for everything that followed. On this surface, that kind of disciplined opening bowling matters enormously.
What the Pitch Gives and Takes
The Ekana pitch does not announce itself. It does not bounce sharply or swing extravagantly in ways that make highlight reels. It just quietly makes batting harder as the game goes on. The black soil slows the surface down through the innings. Average first-innings totals sit between 170 and 175. Anything past 185 is effectively a match-winning score here. The straight boundaries at 81 metres are the longest in India, meaning big hits straight down the ground are genuinely difficult.
Sunday will be hot, around 38 degrees Celsius, easing as evening arrives, with no rain expected. Players will feel it. The ball will feel it. Fielding in those conditions, chasing in those conditions, it all adds up by the time the 16th over arrives.
Gill’s decision to bowl means GT will come in second, chasing, on a pitch that will be slower and grippier than it was at the start. That is the trade he has made. The spinners in LSG’s armoury, Siddharth and Shahbaz Ahmed, will be licking their lips at the thought of bowling to an unfamiliar lineup on a surface doing plenty in the second half.
The Bigger Picture
For LSG, winning tonight would confirm that their early-season drama was not accidental. It would put them on 6 points from 4 matches, with genuine momentum and a home crowd growing louder by the match. For GT, a win here would be a statement of three wins from four, a real foothold in the top half of the table, and evidence that the DC result was a signal rather than a fluke.
There is a phrase that comes up a lot in IPL dressing rooms about teams that know how to win close games. LSG clearly has that quality right now. Whether GT has found it, or whether they are still one wobble away from their old patterns reasserting themselves, is exactly the question tonight is designed to answer.
Gill chose to bowl. Pant will bat first. The rest is still to be written.
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- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
- Prakash Nair
