A new era has been ushered in with the Lucknow Super Giants as the IPL franchise has hired former World Cup winner and Indian pacer Zaheer Khan as the new team mentor for the upcoming 2025 season of the IPL.
LSG owner Sanjiv Goenka called for a press conference regarding the future of his franchise, and one of his first orders of business was to announce Zaheer into the LSG family.
The former Indian pacer shall be filling in the role left open after the departure of the now-Indian team’s head coach Gautam Gambhir when he parted ways to rejoin his beloved KRR before IPL 2024.
He’s here, guys pic.twitter.com/K7Bp7tffVB— Lucknow Super Giants (@LucknowIPL) August 28, 2024
Zaheer, Lucknow ke dil mein aap bohot pehle se ho pic.twitter.com/S5S3YHUSX0— Lucknow Super Giants (@LucknowIPL) August 28, 2024
This won’t be his first stint in managerial/coaching roles though. From 2018 to 2022, Zaheer was involved with the Mumbai Indians (MI) franchise, first as director of cricket and then head of global development.
Prior to that, he was part of three IPL teams as a player – Mumbai Indians, Royal Challengers Bengaluru, and Delhi Daredevils.
Zaheer shall join the ranks of LSG head coach Justin Langer, who is said to continue his tenure, with Lance Klusener and Adam Voges as his assistants.
“I will make sure that the process that is required to LSG the next level is there. The next season is going to be a special one,” stated an ecstatic Zaheer at the press conference in Kolkata, as per RevSportz.
Another point of order though that remains for Goenka to address is that of KL Rahul’s future with the franchise.
According to a report in Cricbuzz on Monday (August 26), Rahul, who joined the Lucknow-based franchise for Rs 17 crore ahead of the IPL 2022 mega auction, met LSG owner Sanjeev Goenka on Monday in the franchise’s Kolkata office.
The one-hour-long meeting between the two was reportedly centered around the team composition for the new season of the cash-rich league and the potential retention of Rahul.
While there is no guarantee that LSG will retain Rahul, the fact that he was called on by the owner could be a pointer to it.
At the presser, Goenka was hesitant to spill the beans on KL Rahul’s future with the Lucknow franchise, stating that he wanted to avoid speculation of any sort.
“I don’t want to comment on speculation. All I will say is that KL Rahul is family,” Goenka stated as per reports from RevSportz.
“KL Rahul is an important and integral part of the Supergiants family.”
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