{"id":522458,"date":"2026-04-10T01:09:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T01:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522458\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T01:09:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T01:09:07","slug":"ipl-2026-lsg-vs-kkr-justin-langer-earmarks-mukul-choudhary-for-even-bigger-hits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/522458\/","title":{"rendered":"IPL 2026 &#8211; LSG vs KKR &#8211; Justin Langer earmarks Mukul Choudhary for even bigger hits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;The thing about him is there&#8217;s very few players like the Tim Davids, the Andre Russells &#8211; and I&#8217;m not even going to say it, I&#8217;m not even going to compare it &#8211; but that&#8217;s how he&#8217;s lived his career,&#8221; Langer told the host broadcast after the game. &#8220;And he&#8217;s got used to finishing off games like that, so he has to think about it, and he&#8217;s only 22 (21) years old.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>LSG were on the brink of defeat after they had been reduced to 128 for 7 in their chase of 182. Despite a few big blows from Choudhary, KKR still dominated the contest and LSG needed 43 off the last three overs. What followed was a spectacular assault, with Choudhary hitting a stunning six over deep cover off Kartik Tyagi, followed by another six in the over and then a sequence of 6, dot, 4 and 6 off Cameron Green in the penultimate over to bring it down to a more gettable 14 from six. Choudhary then belted two more sixes in the last over before the winning runs came in the form of a bye.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s so young, and he&#8217;s got that look in his eyes, he&#8217;s hungry,&#8221; Langer said. &#8220;You know when you first come in, you try so hard, and [this victory will] just be a massive moment in his life and his career\u2026 What I love about him, there&#8217;s areas that we saw straight away. I mean he can do that &#8211; what we&#8217;re seeing on the screen now &#8211; we&#8217;ve seen all that side of it. But he&#8217;s also gone away, he&#8217;s worked on the short ball. We&#8217;ve been doing drills every day with him, and then it came out in practice today, so he&#8217;s got a very curious mind, he wants to get better, and like I say, after you work hard at something and you take it out to the middle\u2026 We&#8217;ve seen plenty of that for the last four weeks or so since he&#8217;s been with us.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>When asked about what was going through his mind when a defeat loomed before the final few overs saw a twist, Langer said: &#8220;I was probably thinking about what I was going to say to our players, I thought we bowled brilliantly on this wicket, I thought we were outstanding, I actually jotted that down, regardless of whether we win or lose, our bowling was excellent and our fielding was elite as well, so I was really pleased with that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>After a loss in their opening match, LSG have now won back-to-back games and sit close to the top four spot early in the group stage. &#8220;If you win the close ones, you get that little bit of belief, don&#8217;t you? And it doesn&#8217;t matter whether you do it with the ball, whether you&#8217;re able to pull back a team or have a tight win like that, but those tight wins, it&#8217;s just like that magic tonic, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>LSG now play their next game against Gujarat Titans at home, on April 12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#8220;The thing about him is there&#8217;s very few players like the Tim Davids, the Andre Russells &#8211; and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522459,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[132648,1721,36623,49,50,132647,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-522458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-bulletin","9":"tag-cricket","10":"tag-daily","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-package","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522458"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522458\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}