Lucknow Super Giants

Lucknow Super Giants joined the IPL in 2022 as one of two expansion franchises, entered a league already seventeen years old, and qualified for the playoffs in their first season. Most new franchises spend two years working out who they are. LSG arrived already knowing.

The KL Rahul question defined LSG’s early seasons in ways that the results alone do not capture. In IPL 2022, Rahul scored 616 runs at an average of 51.3 and a strike rate of 135, numbers that made him the competition’s second-highest scorer and gave Lucknow a batting anchor the entire team’s identity was built around. In the eliminator against Royal Challengers Bangalore, LSG won by 14 runs chasing 208 at the Wankhede. Rahul made 79 off 58 deliveries in a chase that never looked comfortable until the final over. That innings, in an eliminator in his team’s first season, was the specific moment that established what this franchise was going to be: a side that trusts its captain in the moments that matter most.

The 2022 playoff run ended in the qualifier when PBKS, no, when they lost to Royal Challengers, and then continued in 2023 when LSG reached the playoffs again. Back-to-back playoff finishes from a franchise that had not existed in 2021 is a record that should attract more attention than it receives. Gujarat Titans won the title in 2022 and 2023 from the same expansion class, which absorbed most of the narrative, but LSG’s consistency across two seasons told a different story about how a franchise can be built quickly and correctly.

BRSABV Ekana Cricket Stadium in Lucknow holds 50,000 spectators and opened for IPL cricket without the decades of institutional memory that MA Chidambaram or Wankhede carry. The Ekana’s pitch is built on drop-in technology, which introduces variation that visiting teams find harder to read than home sides who have trained on it across a full pre-season. Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populous state, with 240 million people, and cricket’s penetration there is total. The appetite for IPL cricket in Lucknow was never in question. What LSG provided was a reason to be proud of a franchise rather than simply attached to one.

For 2026, LSG are without Rahul, who moved to a new franchise in the IPL restructure, and the question of identity that his presence once answered is now open again. The squad has been rebuilt with that gap in mind, but replacing a captain who anchored the franchise’s first four seasons requires more than a like-for-like import. It requires a new founding narrative.

International viewers can catch LSG home matches at 19:30 IST, which converts to 14:00 GMT for London, 10:00 AM EDT for New York, and 00:00 AEDT for Sydney. Check India time and Lucknow time for your local timezone.