Lucknow Super Giants decided to use KL Rahul as a specialist batter during their IPL 2024 match against Punjab Kings on Friday and replaced him with fast bowler Naveen-ul-Haq as the Impact Substitute. LSG started the match with Quinton De Kock, Nicholas Pooran and Marcus Stoinis as their overseas players and as a result, the decision to bring the Afghanistan cricketer as the Impact Sub was well within the IPL rules. However, the substitution took place during the LSG innings with Naveen coming out to bat at No. 9, the match officials found themselves in a situation that exposed a loophole in IPL rules.
Rahul came out to bat as the opening batter and scored 15 runs in 9 runs before he was dismissed by Arshdeep Singh. Naveen replaced him in the playing XI and came out to bat at No. 9 but because of that, LSG actually had 12 eligible batters in their line-up. Mayank Yadav and M Siddharth were still there in the batting line-up with two wickets left and the IPL rule book does not have any provision for this kind of situation.
While LSG lost only 8 wickets, things could've been trickier for the officials to handle had the franchise 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 as Lucknow Super Giants defeated Punjab Kings by 21 runs despite openers Shikhar Dhawan and Jonny Bairstow's century partnership on Saturday.
Chasing a tough 200-run target for victory after LSG had made 199/8, Shikhar smashed a 50-ball 70, while Bairstow was equally belligerent in his 29-ball 42 as the duo amassed 102 runs for the opening wicket.
But Mayank struck when things were starting to look bleak for LSG, getting rid of Bairstow, Prabhsimran Singh and Jitesh Sharma to return figures of 3/27. Mohsin chipped in with 2/34 as PBKS could only manage 178/5 in their 20 overs.
Earlier, wicketkeeper-batter Quinton de Kock (54), stand-in skipper Nicholas Pooran (42) and Krunal Pandya (43) played some big shots as the hosts made a strong bid to win at home.
Sam Curran emerged the most successful PBKS bowler grabbing three wickets for 28 runs.
(With PTI inputs)