Former India player Aakash Chopra has added that Rishabh Pant has taken a massive pay cut as part of his trade from the Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) to the Delhi Capitals (DC). He further added that most people are unable to earn as much in their entire life. Pant, who was bought by LSG for a whopping price of ₹27 crore at the IPL 2025 auction, was traded to DC for ₹15 crore. However, LSG got Kuldeep Yadav for his existing fee of ₹13.50 crore in return.
Reflecting on the development in a video shared on his YouTube channel, ‘Aakash Chopra,’ he said, “If you were thinking about pay cuts, layoffs, and limited job opportunities in your life, just think about Rishabh Pant. A guy was earning ₹27 crore and will earn only 15 now. One gets slightly surprised while saying only 15, but only 15 because he was at ₹27 crore. It means a pay cut of ₹12 crore. People are not able to earn as much in their entire life.”
“I genuinely feel that Lucknow have benefited more. Their batting order wasn’t getting settled because all four of their overseas players were batters, and then among the Indian batters, they had Rishabh Pant, Ayush Badoni, and Mukul Choudhary. So you weren’t able to bat him before No. 5, and if they tried to bat him before No. 5, an overseas batter had to go down, and the combination was not getting set,” he shared again.
“If I look at it from that perspective, they were not losing much by releasing him. The performance over the last two years hasn’t been good either. He was made the captain with the expectation that the team would do well. If both years didn’t go well, as a batter, you don’t miss, and as a captain, there is nothing to write home about,” Chopra added again.
However, Aakash Chopra also wondered where the Delhi Capitals would accommodate Rishabh Pant in their batting order as well.
“From Delhi’s point of view, I am still intrigued as to where he would bat because they have many opening options, Nitish Rana had started doing well at No. 3, and then they have a good middle order in Tristan Stubbs, David Miller, Sameer Rizvi, and Ashutosh Sharma. Have they solved a problem that was troubling them a lot? I am not 100 percent certain. They will gain because of Rishabh Pant going there, but was the year not good because of a middle-order batter? I don’t think it’s that straightforward,” Aakash Chopra concluded.
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