Delhi Capitals possess one of the strongest spin-bowling pairs in the IPL with their captain Axar Patel teaming up with Kuldeep Yadav. One is a defensive expert. The other is a wristspinner that batters don’t always pick out of the hand. Yet they bowled only four overs between them in the loss to Sunrisers Hyderabad.

“We’ve been sitting there scratching our heads, haven’t we?” Aaron Finch said on ESPNcricinfo’s Time Out show, “Your two Indian premier spin bowlers, Axar Patel, the skipper [2-0-23-1], Kuldeep Yadav [2-0-30-0], they bowled four overs between them. A part-time offspinner in Nitish Rana has wheeled out four overs. To me that makes no sense.”

Rana, who missed DC’s last two matches, opened the bowling against SRH. It was the 27th time in 122 matches that he has bowled in the IPL and the second time that he’s finished his full quota. The DC team clearly wanted someone who could turn the ball away from Abhishek Sharma and Travis Head.

Finch appreciated the challenge that DC faced but didn’t hold back. “It’s the responsibility of your captain, your senior player, your retained player, your best bowler, Indian bowler, he’s one of your core bowlers in the Indian cricket team. That’s no small bit. He’s a double World Cup winner. So the fact that he doesn’t trust himself to execute under pressure and to defend himself against any left-handers – as soon as a left-hander walks to the crease, not for me today, thanks. To me that says more about his attitude towards it than anything else.”

Axar ignored a good head-to-head against Abhishek. Prior to Tuesday’s game, he’d got the SRH opener out twice in eight balls for six runs in the IPL. “He’s got a great defensive mindset with the ball in hand too,” Finch said. “He’s not somebody that you know, if he’s under pressure, he’ll float one up in the slot. He defends himself. He changes angles. He uses his range, his height to his advantage as well. So even when you’re thinking defensive, that’s attacking against Abhishek Sharma when he’s in a mood like that. You bowl a couple of decent balls and you know that something will happen.”

After the game, Axar spoke of the DC bowling performance, saying they didn’t execute their plans and if you don’t execute there’s not much that can be done.

“I’m looking at those comments saying, well hang on, boss, you had the chance as well but you’re not willing to stand up at the moment either,” Finch said. “So I’m no issue with mis-execution. A bowler can mis-execute for a game, for a couple of games. If their planning and their preparation and their thought process is right, I’ve no issues whatsoever with that. Because inevitably you can’t bowl 24 perfect balls. You can’t get your decision-making right all the time.”

Faf du Plessis added: “we wouldn’t have such a bold stand if he had bowled that over and he went for 20. We wouldn’t have gone why are you bowling yourself ahead of Rana.

“The obvious thing is that Axar would have thought lefties at the crease, I’ve bowled my two overs. But the point is he got the lefty out, he got Head out. That was one thing. The next part of it is you didn’t go to someone else that your impact player that came on and bowled, a fast bowler that came on the field. He gave those overs to [Rana] – how many times in his career in the IPL has he bowled four overs in T20 cricket? Never?

“Kuldeep, I can understand, because he hasn’t been at his best. He’s gone for two overs for 30 so maybe he feels like Kuldeep is not bowling the right length on the night so you wanna go to a fingerspinner sometimes. They can control length a little bit better. But I’m still going to Axar as that guy because Axar has got lots of skills with the ball, he goes across left-handers [from around the wicket], he can go into the heel, he’s got tricks.”