Towards the very fag end of April, exactly on the 30th, the IPL world saw a fabulous contest between the second placed Royal Challengers Bengaluru and the fast improving Gujarat Titans. In the contest, the RCB side flew off to a great start with Virat Kohli unbeaten at one point with 28 runs off just 11 deliveries. He would perish two balls later but that wasn’t before striking 5 boundaries off a single Rabada over. Despite going at a good 11 an over in the PowerPlay, the RCB just managed 155 in the end as key wickets fell and helped by a flying start by captain Shubman Gill, it didn’t really take the Titans all that much to emerge victorious in the end even as that meant that at the top order- Sai Sudharsan missed out on the runs. But an interesting sight came to attention as far as the RCB bowling was concerned.

And it was that Krunal Pandya didn’t get to bowl

You read that right. The usually alert and ever ready left arm spinner didn’t even bowl a single over yesterday against the chasing Gujarat team. And rather remarkably, all that his Royal Challengers Bengaluru side used in their defence, though unsuccessfully so, were just 4 bowlers. Just four in the end- these being Josh Hazlewood, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Romario Shepherd and spinner Suyash Sharma.

Now, truthfully speaking, while that didn’t really do all that much to upset the eventual match result as Gujarat found it rather easy to chase down a total that didn’t even require them to score at even 8 an over, if you calculate the asking rate, what still surprised one too many was why Krunal Pandya didn’t get a chance to have a go with the white ball in hand.

So what was the reason? Apparently, in the IPL duel’s aftermath, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, who was speaking to the assembled media at the ground offered his insight and the team’s perspective as to why Krunal wasn’t asked to bowl.  

Here’s what Bhuvi said about Krunal Pandya

Krunal Pandya not bowling was a strategic call. If you look at the scenario, there was some help for the seamers. You don't want to bowl spinners just because they're playing, if there was any help he would've bowled".

So as it turns out, the Ahmedabad surface did not really have all that much for the spinners as such because glancing a simple look at someone like Suyash’s numbers does offer some substance to that perspective. And what does one find?

The spinner went for 44 runs and that too, inside his 4 overs.

Maybe by conserving someone like Krunal Pandya, the RCB also preserved one of their best bowlers and someone who has been quite phenomenal up to this point. He’ll surely get his chance to bowl again, with the white ball, in the next game on a track that may offer spinners more assurance.