The Rishabh Pant-led Lucknow Super Giants registered a slender four-win over Kolkata Knight Riders at the Eden Gardens, Kolkata, on Sunday to register their third win in five matches. Despite scoring 238/3 in 20 overs, LSG survived a scare after some terrific batting from Sunil Narine, Ajinkya Rahane, Venkatesh Iyer and Rinku Singh. Ultimately, Pant’s side won by four runs. However, fans were intrigued when Pant received medical attendance at the start of the 13th over. KKR had reached 149/2 in 12 overs with Ajinkya Rahane and Venkatesh Iyer in full flow. Pant looked liked having an issue on his back.
Coincidentally, immediately after the medical break, KKR lost Rahane, Ramandeep Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Venkatesh Iyer and Andre Russell in successive overs. A section of social media users compared the incident to Pant’s medical time-out during the 2024 T20 World Cup final against South Africa when Heinrich Klaasen was in full flow.
Did Rishabh Pant Use Fake Injury Tactics Of T20 World Cup 2024 Final vs KKR In IPL 2025?#RishabhPant #IPL2025 #DCvsKKR #FakeInjuryDebate #CricketControversy pic.twitter.com/OOKCpuFiNe
— cricketwebs (@cricketwebs_com) April 8, 2025
Rishabh Pant is so good at the art of slowing the game down with an injury !! We’ve seen that before #KKRvsLSG #KKRvLSG pic.twitter.com/4fEPM14CuX
— Cricketism (@MidnightMusinng) April 8, 2025
KKR lost today’s match because of an unsportive mischief of Rishabh Pant. KKR was going strong untill Pant’s pretension of injury lying down on the ground. Then batters lost stance. Once Rohit Sharma said the same tactics was adopted by Pant against a foreign country.
— Sahadev Mohanty (@SahadevMohanty) April 8, 2025
Rishabh Pant’s masterclass #KKRvsLSG pic.twitter.com/5hzCkA5hzR
— Utsav (@utsav__45) April 8, 2025
Speaking about his ;medical timeout’ during the T20 World Cup final, Pant made an interesting admission. “I actually thinking what to do because the momentum had suddenly shifted (in South Africa’s favour), they had scored plenty of runs in 2-3 overs, so I was thinking when will that moment come when we will the World Cup final,” he told Star Sports.
“I was asking the physio to take time. When Rohit bhai asked if my knee is fine I said, ‘Bhaiya, mast acting kar raha tha’ (I was acting all this while). Sometimes you have to do these types of things in matches. I’m not saying it works every time, but it does work sometimes and if it works at that kind of a moment, then nothing like it.”
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