According to reports, team mentor Zaheer Khan has left the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) after just one season of his two-year contract. This is a big change for the team. Zaheer told the club about the decision on Thursday, just before the start of the 2026 Indian Premier League (IPL) season. It leaves a big hole in the team’s leadership.
Sources say that the main reason Zaheer left was because he and head coach Justin Langer and club owner Sanjeev Goenka had very different ideas about how to run the squad. Zaheer got along well with captain Rishabh Pant, but he had trouble with the team’s decision-making process, which he said was “cluttered.”
Zaheer Khan joined LSG in August 2024, taking over for Gautam Gambhir, who left following the 2023 IPL season. Gambhir had since joined the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for IPL 2024 and then became the head coach of the men’s Indian squad. Before working for LSG, Zaheer played with the Mumbai Indians from 2018 to 2022, where he made a big impact.
His main jobs at LSG were to scout, plan, and make decisions. Even though he helped with strategy, the team didn’t do well in IPL 2025. LSG made the playoffs in their first two seasons (2022 and 2023), but in IPL 2025 they came in seventh place with only six victories out of 14 games. The season was a tale of two halves: they won five of their first eight games but only one of their last six. They also didn’t do well at home in Ekana Stadium, as they only won two of eight games.
Zaheer’s strategic thinking was most clear in how he set up the team’s batting order, which was based on the record-breaking signing of Rishabh Pant for ₹27 crore. Even though everyone was talking about Pant beginning the batting, Zaheer talked to him about a different idea. He suggested a plan in which Mitchell Marsh and Aiden Markram would start and Nicholas Pooran would bat third. Pant and the rest of the leadership group liked this concept since it would make things easier for Nicholas Pooran, the team’s main batter.
Because Zaheer is leaving, LSG will need to find a new mentor to work with head coach Justin Langer as they get ready for the IPL 2026 mini-auction.