Muddled selection and poor planning are the root causes of Lucknow Super Giants’ cascading performance in the ongoing IPL. However, placed sixth in the table with 12 points from a dozen games, they are in a much better position than star-studded teams like Mumbai Indians and RCB and still have an outside chance of making the Playoffs.

Then why this sudden scrutiny of LSG’s plight with two matches remaining? There are two reasons for it. One, the humiliating 10-wicket defeat suffered at the hands of SRH in Hyderabad on Wednesday night, and two, the chiding their skipper KL Rahul got from the LSG owner Sanjiv Goenka in full public view after the match. Was it right for the LSG owner to lash out at the skipper in a manner that will be debated threadbare all around? Without a doubt, the team’s top brass has the right to perform a post-mortem on each player, especially on the captain; but surely not in front of live cameras. With LSG still to play DC and MI, what kind of effect the public lashing of their captain will have on the team, only time will tell.