LSG owner Sanjiv Goenka’s brother drops thinking face emoji to hilarious meme featuring KL Rahul and Rishabh Pant amid IPL 2025 auction
Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) owner Sanjiv Goenka’s brother Harsh dropped a thinking face emoji to a hilarious meme featuring Rishabh Pant and KL Rahul after the IPL 2025 auction. The meme featured Rahul and Pant, with the former seemingly calling Sanjiv a tough boss.
The Super Giants went all guns blazing at the auction table to buy Rishabh Pant as the costliest buy in the history of the T20 league. They splurged a whopping ₹27 crore for the wicketkeeper-batter’s services. Pant beat current IPL-winning skipper Shreyas Iyer, who was roped in by Punjab Kings for ₹26.75 crore.
KL Rahul had left LSG at the IPL 2025 retentions. He was bought by Delhi Capitals (DC) at a steal of ₹14 crore.
An X user shared a meme that read:
“Dekh Bhai, company achi hai, pay acha hai, par boss bahot toxic hai.”
Translated version:
“Look brother, the company is good, the reputation is good, but the boss is very toxic.”
Reacting to the post, Harsh Goenka dropped the thinking face emoji.
Notably, Harsh was the owner of the now-defunct Rising Pune Super Giants IPL franchise. His franchise had replaced MS Dhoni with Steve Smith as skipper for their second season.
What led to a rift between the LSG owner and KL Rahul?
There was a rift between LSG and KL Rahul following a 10-wicket loss to SunRisers Hyderabad (SRH) by 10 wickets and 10.2 overs in match 57 of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Rahul’s statement didn’t go well with his owner after he praised SRH instead of LSG’s shortcomings after a proper bashing by Travis Head and Abhishek Sharma.
Following the game, Rahul said (via ESPNcricinfo):
"I'm lost for words. We've watched that batting on TV but that was unreal. Everything was hitting the middle of the bat, kudos to their skill, they've worked very hard on their six-hitting. They didn't give a chance to see what the wicket was playing like, it didn't change much, but that mindset and freedom to tee off from ball one... the only way to stop them was wickets in the powerplay and we didn't do that.”
Later at IPL 2025 retentions, Sanjiv Goenka said he wants players with a winning mentality while taking a dig at Rahul. He said (via ESPNcricinfo):
“It was a simple mindset to go in with players who have a mindset to win, who put the team first before their personal goals and personal aspirations and we wanted to retain as much as of core we could.”
Following Goenka’s comments, KL Rahul said he was looking for a fresh start. He told Star Sports (via ESPNcricinfo):
"No, I mean, I think the decision was made already and I don't know what the comments are, but they must have come after the announcement.”
"I just felt like I wanted to start fresh, I wanted to explore my options and I wanted to go and play where I could find some freedom and the team atmosphere would be something much more balanced,” he added.
Click here to check out all the details about the IPL 2025 auction.