Nichols Pooran continued his purple patch and smashed a brilliant 70 off 26 balls to take Lucknow Super Giants (LSG) to their maiden win of IPL 2025. Batting with a strike rate of 269.23, Pooran smashed 6 sixes and as many boundaries. He and Mitchell Marsh added 116 runs for the second wicket to pull LSG out of a tough spot.

Pooran had started the season with a half-century and he now holds the Orange Cap with a tally of 145 runs. He had first joined LSG in the IPL 2023 mini-auction and has been with them since then.

LSG shelled out a huge sum of Rs 21 crore to retain Pooran before the IPL 2025 mega-auction. He had first joined the team for Rs 16 crore.

Gautam Gambhir was keen to buy Pooran and LSG continued to bid for him. They defeated Delhi Capitals and made the winning bid for him worth Rs 16 crore.

Given Pooran's below-par performances in the past few seasons (before IPL 2023), he wasn't expected to go for such a high amount. But LSG still went for him. Speaking to Jio Cinema after the IPL 2023 mini-auction, Gambhir revealed the reason behind bidding for Pooran and said: "We did not even think about what he did in the last IPL season. It was just his ability. We were clear on the fact that we had to have someone like him, someone of his caliber. He is 26-27 and probably he is going to start peaking from here on. It's not about how many runs you score, it's about the impact, if he can win 3-4 games, he has that ability. How many players have the ability to play in the top 4 and as well at 6-7. Nicholas has that ability."

Pooran managed 85 runs in IPL 2021 and followed up with 306 runs in the next season. He scored 358 runs in IPL 2023 and followed up with 499 runs.

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