Krunal Pandya says today’s generation of IPL batters has natural fearlessness but has not developed patience. The RCB all-rounder made the distinction in a franchise content piece released on August 11, 2026, drawing a line between what his generation had to earn and what the current generation gets naturally.
“I had to work really hard to be fearless. Today’s generation is fearless, but they have to work on patience.”
Krunal Pandya, RCB franchise content, August 11, 2026
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Krunal Pandya opens up on how much IPL batsmanship has evolved over the⦠pic.twitter.com/xv9P7D9Cak
β Royal Challengers Bengaluru (@RCBTweets) August 11, 2026
This is not a one-off remark. Krunal has been building this argument across two IPL seasons. After RCB’s win over MI in April 2026, he identified the impact player rule as the structural cause: batting lineups now go eight deep, and the all-rounder slots at No. 6 and No. 7 that once demanded situational batting have been replaced by pure hitters. Players like Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Mukul Choudhary, he observed, arrive and hit from ball one.
“I have never shied away from trying different and new things. Because if you see, with the impact player rule, previously without an impact player, you had No. 6 allrounder or No. 7 allrounder. Batsmanship was quite different. But now, having eight pure batters and the skill set they have, you see young boys like Mukul Choudhary and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi, so many of them are just coming and hitting from ball one consistently.”
Krunal Pandya, post-match press conference, MI vs RCB, IPL 2026, April 13, 2026
In a separate conversation on JioStar in May 2026, Krunal described a decade of IPL batting transformation that has left bowlers permanently searching for new ways to compete. Each time, the message sharpened: from observing fearlessness, to explaining its structural cause, to now naming what the current generation still needs.
Insider Read:
Patience in T20 does not mean blocking or batting slowly. It means knowing which delivery to attack and which to respect. When a lineup has eight batters and every one of them swings from ball one, the ability to read a bowling spell quietly disappears. A batter who cannot identify a good delivery outside off stump early in their innings will lose their wicket to that same ball in a knockout game.
The impact player rule accelerated this shift. When all-rounders batted at 6 and 7, they walked in during collapses and had to rebuild. They absorbed 10 or 15 balls of pressure before finding scoring opportunities. That gear shift within a single innings is the skill Krunal calls patience. Now those positions are filled by designated hitters expected to strike at 170 from the start. The skill of changing gears mid-innings is fading because the IPL’s structure no longer forces anyone to practice it.
What Krunal’s 73 Against MI Proved About Patience
Krunal’s own IPL 2026 tells the story. Against MI in Raipur on May 11, RCB were 39 for 3 in the sixth over. Krunal walked in and did what he says young batters struggle to do: he waited. He stabilised the innings first, stitched a 55-run stand with Jacob Bethell, then identified scoring pockets and changed gears. Five sixes and four boundaries came from his 46-ball 73, but only after he had absorbed the pressure that the situation demanded.
He did this while batting through cramps that had spread from his hamstring to his glutes. Running singles had become painful, so he adjusted: he took the strike for entire overs at the death rather than rotating. Krunal was dismissed in the 18th over, but the platform he built was enough. Bhuvneshwar Kumar hit a decisive six off the penultimate ball to seal a last-ball win.
That innings was not fearless hitting from ball one. It was patient batting that became fearless at the right moment. Krunal finished IPL 2026 with 226 runs at 37.67 and a strike rate of 145.8: absorb, assess, then accelerate. It is a skill sharpened across 158 IPL matches and five championship-winning campaigns with MI and RCB.
The strike rate debate in Indian cricket is not new. Krunal’s argument adds something most critics skip: he is not against fearlessness. He is saying it is incomplete without patience. The best IPL innings, his own 73 included, prove the two work together.
Krunal Pandya made these remarks in a video posted by RCB’s verified X account on August 11, 2026. No additional statement has been issued at time of publication.
Sources:
Royal Challengers Bengaluru, X (Twitter), August 11, 2026
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