Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s victory over Mumbai Indians at the Wankhede on Sunday owed plenty to an old-fashioned battle of spin. Krunal Pandya and Suyash Sharma, working in tandem through overs seven to ten, conceded only 37 runs and removed three key batters – Ryan Rickelton, Tilak Varma and Suryakumar Yadav. Between them the pair finished with 8-0-73-3; Suyash was expensive at the death, yet Krunal’s economy of 6.50 kept MI behind the rate.
Those numbers looked even better alongside the home side’s figures. Mitchell Santner and Mayank Markande managed 6-0-83-1, and the lengths they bowled told a tale. Analyst Gaurav Sundararaman, on ESPNcricinfo’s TimeOut show, pointed out that the MI slow men pitched 27% of their deliveries full, with another 18.9% landing in the yorker or full-toss zone. By contrast, RCB’s spinners were fuller just 4.2% of the time and did not offer a single full-toss.
Former Mumbai batsman Ambati Rayudu, watching the game from the studio, felt the problem lay more with the hosts’ approach than the visitors’ brilliance. “It shows that the MI batsmen are not prepared to use their feet against the spinners. If you really have to be good against these lengths, you need to use your feet, come down the pitch and then try and take them on or hit straight,” Rayudu said. “All MI batsmen, maybe not Rohit, they don’t like to step out. They just want to play square of the wicket and they’re waiting for a short ball or they’re waiting for a fuller ball. If they don’t do that, I’m sure a lot of spinners will be quite effective against this batting line-up.”
Krunal, six seasons a Mumbai player before moving to Lucknow and now Bengaluru, prefers to keep things simpler – and, in his words, stay ahead of the hitter. “I just wanted to be one step ahead and keep the batsman guessing and that worked for us,” he said after the match. “And yes, Suyash bowled really well. Taking those two wickets in [his] first over changed the momentum. And I always believe bowling is about partnerships. And we were able to do that for the team, which was quite satisfying.”
While Sharma is only in his fourth IPL campaign, Pandya credits steady off-season work for the leg-spinner’s growing consistency. “He has been getting better. I’ll give a lot of credit to Malolan [Rangarajan], who is our spin-bowling coach. He has been constantly working with Suyash in the off-season as well as during the season. He is always having conversations with him. And credit goes to Suyash that he has been able to adapt to things and he has been able to be consistent as a bowler, which always helps in a game where batters are taking you every ball.”
Krunal’s own variations remain instinctive rather than pre-scripted. “I don’t pre-plan that I want to bowl a fourth- or a fifth- or a sixth-ball bouncer. There are days where I’ll bowl two bouncers back-to-back and suddenly I’ll bowl first ball and a sixth ball. So there are no such plans. But yeah, it’s more sort of a gut feeling when to bowl which ball and I just commit 100% to that.”
The tactical edge RCB found here will not solve every contest, and MI’s line-up, once fit and firing, rarely falters twice in succession. Yet on a humid evening at the Wankhede, a pair of spinners – one seasoned, one still learning – nudged the match Bengaluru’s way by thinking a fraction quicker than the men with the bats.
