Shardul Thakur is a renowned player in Indian cricket known for taking wickets at crucial moments. However, no team selected him in this year’s IPL auction, and he went unsold. Yet, as they say, one person’s loss is another’s gain. Lucknow Super Giants brought him in to replace the injured Mohsin Khan, and this move proved beneficial for them.
LSG has given him a new role: bowling in the power play. Fans expected him to take crucial wickets this IPL season, but no one anticipated just how successful he would be. In their first match against Delhi Capitals, he bowled the opening over and gave his team a fantastic start by taking two wickets in a single over.
He dismissed the dangerous Jack Fraser-McGurk and Abhishek Porel cheaply, putting the Capitals under pressure. However, LSG couldn’t secure a win due to Ashutosh Sharma‘s brilliant late innings. Despite the loss, Shardul earned plenty of praise from his peers and fans. His man of the match performance came against SRH.
Every fan expected SRH’s batters to dominate LSG’s bowling, but Thakur had other plans. He dismissed the dangerous Abhishek Sharma and removed Ishan Kishan on the very next ball, who had scored a century in the previous match. Thakur went on to take two more wickets, dismissing Abhinav Manohar and Mohammed Shami, finishing with four wickets in the match. He is now the second-highest wicket-taker after CSK’s Noor Ahmad.
Shardul Thakur completed 100 IPL wickets in the match against Sunrisers Hyderabad
With his impressive spell of 4 wickets for 34 runs, Shardul Thakur reached a personal milestone, becoming the 25th bowler in IPL history to take 100 wickets. The LSG Pacer achieved this feat in just 97 matches. He has an average of 29.22 and a respectable economy rate of 9.21 in the Indian Premier League.
An interesting fact is that he has already surpassed his wicket tally from last season. In the 2024 IPL, he took only 5 wickets in 9 matches for Chennai Super Kings. This season, however, has been a complete turnaround, with him claiming 6 wickets in just two matches.
The Super Giants’ next match is against Punjab Kings, who have performed well under their new captain, Shreyas Iyer. LSG suffered a heartbreaking loss in their opener but made a strong comeback against title contenders SRH. It will be exciting to see how they fare against PBKS on April 1.