IPL 2025: Why Marsh – Pooran combination is working for LSG?
There is something different about the Indian Premier League this season. The flavour of IPL, for one out of the ten teams, Lucknow Super Giants, seems to be set apart and quite distinct from all other teams. LSG seems to have decoded their top three batsmen better than all other nine franchises.
By putting faith in their batters, Mitchell Marsh and Nicholas Pooran, they’ve found the right groove and the way to crack every match outing with complete confidence. The two highly experienced and overseas batters, Marsh and Pooran have consistently showed their pair is a winning combination for the team and can handle any opposition to score big and claim the victory.
The match on Tuesday against the Kolkata Knight Riders at their own home ground Eden Gardens was no different either. It was a fiery show, certainly not for the first time, as Mitchell Marsh played a fine innings of 81 runs and Nicholas Pooran hammered 87 runs, with a staggering 13 sixes and 13 fours between them jointly.
Together, they have not only climbed the run-scoring charts to take the first and second position on the orange cap board but have also transformed LSG’s top order into one of the most dangerous of the season 2025.
What makes this set-up even more remarkable is Marsh coming out as an opener, a role he’s rarely batted as. Before this season, he had opened just four times in all of his T20I career and only twice in the IPL history. His transformation has taken people by utter surprise. Prior to the current edition, he had only three fifties to his name. But with bowling not happening this year due to an injury, he has been able to focus solely on his batting.
Marsh has looked quite dominant, liberated and confident from the start this year- scoring four fifties in the five games he’s played this season. Marsh has taken his count tally to 265 runs. This kind of exceptional form that only three other batters – Virat Kohli, David Warner and Chris Gayle have achieved in the start an IPL season.
Marsh is playing with the freedom that shows he has got nothing to prove to anyone and to just enjoy the game from his heart. His chemistry with Nicholas Pooran at No. 3 has clicked perfectly, making the job of the bowlers, coaches, management and captain quite easy.
On the other hand, Pooran has been synonymous with pure power. He has now hit over 200 T20 sixes since the start of 2024 — comfortably more than anyone else. His score of 87 against KKR was his highest-ever IPL score. He has 288 runs so far from five innings, including three half-centuries under his name.
His spot at number 3 has become kind of unchangeable, as the Caribbean batter has batted at one-down position regularly since the 2023 season of Caribbean Premier League (CPL), the Major League Cricket (MLC) and the 2024 T20 World Cup.
Between Marsh’s hard-hitting and Pooran’s classy shots, the Lucknow Super Giants have found a momentum in their unit that’s redefining what iconic batting pairs are like. If these two keep batting like this, LSG will be storming into the playoffs, thanks to the Pooran-Marsh association that has been forged this year.
By: Tulika Agarwal
