Aaron Finch Suggests Role Change for Rishabh Pant Amid IPL Performance Woes
Rishabh Pant joined the IPL 2025 for Lucknow Super Giants for 27 crores, but his performance was disappointing. He scored 128 runs in 11 innings and the team had to face defeat in many matches. Aaron Finch suggested that Pant should hand over the responsibility of wicketkeeping to Pooran to focus on captaincy.
India's star wicketkeeper-batsman Rishabh Pant joined Lucknow Super Giants in IPL 2025 for a price of 27 crores. Pant is the most expensive player sold in the IPL, although this season he has scored only 128 runs in 11 innings. His performances include five single-digit scores, one duck and just one half-century. During the match against Punjab on Sunday, when Lucknow's two wickets went down, Pant came to bat at number four and while chasing the target of 237, he scored just 18 runs in 17 balls. LSG lost the match by 37 runs and are now 7th in the points table with six defeats from 11 matches.
Former Australia batsman Aaron Finch believes that Pant should hand over the responsibility of wicketkeeping to Nicholas Pooran. "It's going to be really difficult to captain a team when you're a wicketkeeper," Finch said while talking on JioStar."You probably get a few seconds to talk to your bowler between overs and with the stop-clock rule, that time is very short. It can be really tricky – the bowler's plan can change from ball to ball and so can Rishabh's. You can see how excited and frustrated he is when things don't go according to plan."
Finch further said, "Maybe the time has come for him to say, 'Pooran, you take responsibility behind the wicket.' I have to get the rhythm, manage the plans better and speak directly to my attack. "
The IPL 2025 season has been the worst season of the tournament for Rishabh Pant so far. In his IPL debut season in 2016, Pant scored 198 runs in 10 matches at an average of 24.75, including a half-century. Pant's average in the current season is 12.80 and his strike rate has also gone below 100 for the first time in the tournament. In 122 IPL matches so far, Pant has scored 3412 runs at an average of 33.13, including 19 half-centuries and a century.