Win it to be in it

LSG’s KL Rahul during their match v PBKS in Mohali last year. Pic/AFP

New Lucknow Super Giants coach Justin Langer is confidence personified ahead of the 16th edition of the IPL, which gets underway on Friday night. He feels the team have the required talent for them to go all the way in the IPL this year after they were eliminated in the playoffs in their first two years. He added, besides the talent, the key is fitness and camaraderie within the team, which is vital in such a long-drawn tournament. He said this 50-day tournament is the "survival of the finest."

Healthy unit is key

"Every time I go to the ground, I say a small prayer: ‘Please keep our players healthy'. That's the key for me. A healthy unit is a good headache to have as we can put our best XI on the park for each game," Langer said.

Justin Langer

The biggest fitness concern for LSG has been their skipper KL Rahul, who missed four of the five Test matches against England recently. The BCCI medical team have cleared him to play in the IPL on the condition that he would not don wicketkeeping gloves initially.

Rahul's performance both as captain and batsman is linked not only to the fortunes of LSG, but also to personal chances of getting picked in the Indian squad for the T20 World Cup to be played in June in the USA and the Caribbean. Langer stressed that only a strong performance in the IPL could secure Rahul's spot in the national team.

"If the team do well, everyone gets rewarded. Likewise, if KL can captain LSG to the IPL title, that means he would have captained well, batted well and kept wickets well. That would bring its reward for him in the form of a berth in the Indian T20 squad," Langer said.

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‘Credit to ex-coach Flower'

s for winning the IPL title this year, he said: "We have been in the tournament only for two years and playoffs in these two years is so much of a performance. We need to applaud [former coach] Andy Flower, and also applaud the squad we have had for the two years. But we have to get everything right to win the IPL. It's like winning a World Cup.

Big tournaments are hard to win, so we need to remain consistent, and play as a cohesive unit because I believe in camaraderie within the group. Everyone sticks tight together if everyone is close, and when pressure comes in. When you do not have camaraderie, things tend to go the other way. We have a tightly knit unit, we have the talent, so we hope everything goes right to give ourselves the best chance.

The former Australia opener and coach said that LSG are lucky to have enough talented players to give the coach the headache to fit them in the playing XI. "Talent is talent. Whether they are 43 years old or 17. We have picked the most talented players. Like I said, talent is talent and we have a lot of it. The headache is trying to fit all that talent into the 11 positions. That's the part of the puzzle for the selector or the coach," Langer remarked.