In their debut IPL season, the Lucknow Super Giants finished third on the points table with 9 wins and 5 losses. They were, however, knocked out by RCB in the Eliminator.
Skipper KL Rahul led from the front and finished as the second-leading scorer of the tournament with 616 runs at 51. He notched up 2 centuries and 4 fifties in the tournament.
LSG found a few youngsters in both batting and bowling departments who performed well for them.
To strengthen the squad further, Lucknow will look to make use of the trading window ahead of the IPL 2023 auction, which is slated in mid-December. LSG would also ponder over releasing or trading away some players.
Here are 3 players who LSG might trade away in the trading window:
Manan Vohra
Manan Vohra got chances in two matches and scored only 19 runs in IPL 2022. Vohra has been around the IPL since 2013, but has never been able to put up any memorable performance and has lacked consistency.
Batting mostly in the top order, Vohra has only 3 fifty-plus scores in 55 IPL matches and has often found himself getting dropped because of a lack of six-hitting ability.
Lucknow have their batting sorted; in fact, they have one too many options for the top order, and releasing Vohra could be a good thing to do. They could trade him away for another player who’d strengthen their squad.
Shahbaz Nadeem
Shahbaz Nadeem is a renowned first-class spinner and has even played a couple of Tests for India. However, the left-arm spinner has lacked potency in the T20 format. In 72 IPL matches, Nadeem has taken only 48 wickets. He was benched for the entire season by LSG and featured in only one match in 2021 for SRH.
LSG has a number of T20 spinners – Krunal, Bishnoi, Gowtham, Karan Sharma, and even Hooda been used as an off-spinner in recent times – so it would make little sense if LSG stuck with Nadeem for another season. He isn’t likely to get any game time and perhaps it would be best for both parties if LSG traded him away.
Ankit Rajpoot
Once touted to be amongst the best of young Indian seamers, Ankit Rajpoot’s stocks have plummeted with time in the past years. In 29 IPL matches, after making his debut in 2013, Rajpoot has only snapped 24 wickets at a high economy of 9.2.
Rajpoot didn’t find any buyers in IPL 2021 and LSG bought him at a cheap rate in 2022, but the pacer only warmed the bench throughout the season. LSG has a solid mix of Indian and overseas pacers already and Rajpoot would be on the bench next year as well. Lucknow could strongly ponder over trading Ankit away.
