Lucknow Super Giants never gave Arjun Tendulkar a single game this season, even as the franchise’s social media team pushed a yorker package on him online. The omission stood out because the same side kept searching for answers across a campaign that never settled into a clear XI.

The season was built under a support staff headed by Justin Langer and Tom Moody, and it still produced a side that looked unsure of its strongest combination. Rishabh Pant was bought by Sanjiv Goenka for Rs 27.50 crore, but the expensive move did not stop the team from leaning on stop-start selection calls and repeated changes.

On paper, LSG had pieces that should have given them a harder edge. Mohsin Khan took 11 wickets, Prince Yadav took 16 and Akash Singh had one tidy outing before being severely punished in the next. But the group never truly possessed an intimidating foreign pace option beyond Anrich Nortje, and he got only one game. Mayank Yadav, back after surgery, played only four games, did not take a wicket and leaked runs at an economy rate in excess of 11.

The batting choices were just as hard to read. LSG persisted with Nicholas Pooran despite repeated failures through the tournament, a sign that the management was either backing reputation or running out of alternatives. That same uncertainty framed the Arjun Tendulkar call, because the side never used him at all while still finding room to market him on its own platforms.

That gap between selection and promotion captures what defined much of the campaign: confused combinations, uncertain tactical judgment and body language that often suggested the team did not know its best route after defeats. By the time the question of fringe-player opportunities came up, LSG were effectively out of playoff contention, which made the decision to leave Tendulkar unused look less like a hard cricketing call and more like another example of muddled planning.

For LSG, the damage was not only in the results. It was in the pattern. A team that spent heavily, rotated frequently and still could not settle on its strongest XI ended up leaving obvious questions behind, with Arjun Tendulkar the most visible of them.