Rishabh Pant arguably LSG’s best batter vs RCB, needs to step up & replicate feat from 2025

Rishabh Pant has been quite unpredictable throughout his career. There are times when he has played some brilliant, match-winning knocks. And then, there are times (most of them) when he has faltered by either getting good starts and failing to convert them to big knocks, or by simply getting out while attempting to play rash shots. While the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) skipper is yet to find the right footing in the ongoing Indian Premier League (IPL 2026), he stands a golden chance of doing so in the game against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) on Wednesday.

Pant has an impeccable record against the defending champions, which makes him one of the best LSG batters against the opposition. No one can forget Rishabh’s much-talked-about cartwheel celebration that he pulled off in LSG’s final game of IPL 2025 after slamming a century that ended his streak of poor performances in that season. Well, that same hundred and energy is what LSG might require if they fancy a chance of toppling a formidable RCB in match 23 of IPL 2026.

Why Rishabh Pant is LSG’s best bet vs RCB

Pant has faced RCB 13 times in his IPL career, in which he has managed to amass 539 runs, including a hundred and four fifties. He averages 53.9 against the opposition and boasts a strike rate of 158.06. The last time LSG played RCB, the southpaw finished with an unbeaten 118-run knock of just 61 deliveries, playing at a strike rate of 193.44. He did so while batting at number 3, pretty much the same position that he is currently batting at for LSG in IPL 2026. He has never been dismissed for a duck while playing against RCB.

Three out of the four fifties that he has scored against RCB have come while batting at number 4 and one at number 3. His hundred came while batting at number 3.

However, when we talk about Pant’s recent form, he has been quite miserable. Barring an unbeaten 68-run knock against SRH, the southpaw has flopped on the rest of the occasions, making him more of a liability than an asset for LSG. The batter’s failure to get going has put extreme pressure on the rest of the middle-order, leaving them in a lurch.

Pant’s repeated failures while batting at number 3 has also impacted the performances of Nicholas Pooran, who is now forced to bat at number 4, a role that he isn’t quite familiar with. Should Pant take a punt and drop himself to number 4 to get the best out of him against RCB?

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