Lucknow Supergiants have decided to use KL Rahul as specialist batsman in Friday’s IPL 2024 match against Kings XI Punjab and replace him with fast bowler Naveen-ul-Haq as an impact substitute. LSG’s overseas players Quinton De Kock, Nicholas Pooran and Marcus Stoinis started, hence the decision to use the Afghanistan cricketer as an impact substitute Fully compliant with IPL rules. However, the substitution occurred during the LSG innings, with Naveen batting at No. 9, and the match officials found themselves in a situation that exposed a loophole in the IPL rules.

Rahul came out as the opening batsman and scored 15 runs for 9 before being dismissed by Arshdeep Singh. Naveen replaced him in the starting lineup and batted at No. 9, but because of that, LSG actually had 12 eligible batsmen in their lineup. Mayank Yadav and M Siddharth are still in the batting line-up with two wickets remaining and the IPL rulebook does not have any provision for such a situation.

Although LSG only lost 8 wickets, things could have been trickier if the team had lost 2 more wickets before the end of the innings.

As for the match, young pace bowler Mayank Yadav grabbed three wickets while Mohsin Khan took two wickets for Lucknow Lucknow Super Giants defeated Punjab Kings by 21 runs despite the loss of openers Shikhar Dhawan and Jonny Bairstow on Saturday Established a cooperative relationship of the century.

After LSG posted 199/8, Shikhar smashed a 50-ball 70 as they chased a tough victory target of 200 runs, while Bairstow was equally combative with a 29-ball 42 points, the duo scored 102 runs for the opening wicket.

But when things started looking bleak for LSG, Mayank struck out, getting rid of Bairstow, Prabhusimran Singh and Jitesh Sharma to restore the score to 3/27. Mohsin took 2/34 while PBKS could only manage 178/5 in 20 overs.

Earlier, wicketkeeper-batsman Quinton de Kock (54), stand-in captain Nicholas Pooran (42) and Krunal Pandya (43) bowled some important balls to help the home team A strong win at home.

Sam Curran emerged as the most successful bowler in PBKS as he took 3 wickets and scored 28 runs.

(with PTI input)