“You’ve got to bowl him in [overs] 7 to 15,” Abhinav said on ESPNcricinfo’s Time Out Show. “And in conditions like this, when you’ve got Miller and Axar going, it’s very difficult for a captain to hand him the ball. If he had to do that, he had to do it in the seventh over when Axar and [Tristan] Stubbs were there. But then again, I would’ve personally got out at least an over of Chahal to just see what was happening. To just see because when you had the scoreboard pressure and you had the luxury of giving away even 18 or 20 [runs], if need be, at that point, but try and take the gamble to pick up a wicket. So I would’ve done that between overs 7 to 10 and if it didn’t work, you had Stoinis as insurance.”

“It’s an interesting call,” Abhinav said, “because [PBKS] don’t use him in the powerplay. Rajasthan [Royals], we’ve seen Yuzi bowl in the death but now the league’s become very difficult for a spinner to bowl in the death unless you’re Krunal Pandya [who uses pace-on bouncers and low-arm slingers].”

Shreyas touched on the subject in the post-match presentation. “There was absolutely a thought [of bowling Chahal] but the way the ball was seaming and helping seamers, I think if we could have executed our lines and lengths precisely, we could have extracted wickets. But unfortunately we didn’t.”

PBKS, having gone seven games unbeaten from the start of IPL 2026, have now lost four on the bounce. They do still remain in playoff contention with three games to play and two of them are against MI and Lucknow Super Giants who are rooted to the bottom of the table.