Former South African fast bowler Dale Steyn has highlighted that Lucknow Super Giants are too scared to drop Nicholas Pooran and thus they are making continuous changes to their batting order. Ayush Badoni has been opening the innings for LSG in the last two games whereas Aiden Markram has been pushed down to the middle order.

Pooran has struggled to get going in IPL 2026 as he has managed only 73 runs in seven matches at an average of 10.43 and a strike rate of 82.02.

LSG could not chase down a below-par score of 160 runs against Rajasthan Royals as they were bowled out for 119 and suffered a 40-run loss.

Dale Steyn said on ESPN Cricinfo, “Pooran is the catalyst in this. The poor form of Pooran just means that you’re moving good batters [around] to try and shepherd him. Because I think there’s a seed of doubt in the coach’s minds that they know they need to play him because of what his potential is. But when he doesn’t score runs, you need somebody in there.

“So Markram is getting thrown from where he should be as an opening batter to the middle order. Because they just want that stability over there. But they’re too scared to drop Pooran because they don’t have the faith in maybe somebody like a [Matthew] Breetzke to come in to the team,” the Proteas legend added.

On the other hand, LSG head coach Justin Langer admitted their batting is not clicking and it is leading to their downfall in the ongoing season.

“Yeah, we haven’t quite clicked, have we. Last year, our numbers were incredible and we were ruing the fact that a lot of our bowlers were injured or coming back from injury or not quite fit. This year our bowlers have been a real credit… But our batting’s just not quite clicking. Who would have thought at the start of the season, if – how many games have we played now, seven games – our batting hadn’t clicked with the calibre of players we’ve got, we could never have read that.”

LSG will next take on KKR at Lucknow on Sunday.