After losing their last league stage match in the 2025 Indian Premier League (IPL) table, Lucknow Super Giants finished their 2025 Indian Premier League (IPL) campaign in 7th place with 12 points on the board with six wins in eight defeats.

The Rishabh Pant-led side finished level on points with Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), who finished eighth in the table. Quite interestingly, LSG had a worse NRR (-0.376) than KKR (0.305) but were placed ahead of them in the table.

While normally teams are separated by NRR when points are equal, the first criterion of consideration is the number of matches a team has won. In the 2025 IPL, LSG have six victories while KKR had five wins. The defending champions completed only 12 matches and lost seven games, while two were washed out which gave them one point each.

The same rule famously turned the tide of the 2015 IPL when Mumbai Indians (MI) and Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) finished on the same points. While RCB had the better NRR, they finished third, meanwhile, MI secured the second spot and got to play the first qualifier and earned two chances at reaching the final and ultimately lifted the trophy.

Talking about LSG, this is their worst-ever IPL campaign. While they reached the playoffs in 2022 and 2023, where they finished third but lost the eliminator. In 2024, they finished sixth with 14 points. The 2025 season is their lowest point tally as well as position on the points tally.

KKR's title defense proved a nightmare as they failed to replicate the heroics of Shreyas Iyer's team in the year before in Ajinkya Rahane's debut season as their captain.

KKR's title defense is the worst since CSK in 2022, when they finished 9th a year after lifting the trophy.

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