Why didn't Pat Cummins bowl spinners at death?

Venkatesh Iyer, who made 60 off 29 balls (7x4s, 3x6s), and Vaibhav Arora, who picked 3/29 in his four overs were the stars of the Indian Premier League 2025 match between Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH) held in Eden Gardens on Thursday night but it was the ambidextrous bowling of Sri Lankan Kamindu Mendis that grabbed the limelight.

Mendis, who bowled off-spin when bowling to left-handed batsmen, and left-arm spin while bowling to right-handers, finished with 1/4 in one over for SRH, who lost the match by a huge margin of 80 runs.

After SRH had grabbed early initiative after electing to bowl, by picking two early wickets – of Quinton de Kock and Sunil Narine, it were skipper Ajinkya Rahane (38 off 27 balls, 1x4s, 4x6s) and Angkrish Raghuvanshi (50 off 32 balls, 5x4s, 2x6s) who helped KKR recover. But after the duo’s dismissal post the 10-over stage – KKR were 84/2 in 10 overs – it seemed like SRH would claw back.

However, Venkatesh Iyer, who was bought for Rs 23.7 crore and Rinku Singh (32 not out off 17 balls) demolished their bowling, taking 78 runs in the last five overs which included overs from skipper Pat Cummins, who went for 21 runs in an over and Mohammed Shami, who conceded 12 in an over.

Perhaps Cummins made a mistake of not bowling Mendis or even leg-spinner Zeeshan Ansari (1/25 in three), both of who had done well.

The late onslaught helped KKR finish at 200/9 in their 20 overs.

SRH, if they had to win, needed to fire through their top three – Travis Head, Abhishek Sharma and Ishan Kishan.

But Arora picked Kishan and Head early while Harshit Rana took the wicket of Sharma as SRH were reduced to 9/3 in 13 balls.

Arora came back to pick the wicket of Heinrich Klaasen (33 off 21 balls) off a slower ball to confine SRH to the 80-run defeat.

Leg-spinner Varun Chakravarthy picked 3/22 in his four overs.

The other KKR spinner took 1/30 in his four overs.

The success of KKR spinners (4/52 in eight overs) throws a question, why didn’t Cummins bring on the spinners?

Tags : Pat Cummins, SRH, KKR, IPL 2025, Vaibhav Arora, Venkatesh Iyer