Moving on with our series of Auction Previews for all the 10 teams in Tata IPL, we are going to talk about the finalists of the previous season, the franchise having the tagline of Halla Bol, Rajasthan Royals.
Rajasthan Royals had a pretty good season last time around as they reached the finals of the Tata IPL 2022. They played the final after a long wait of 15 years. The last final they played was in 2008, the inaugural season of the IPL where they won the trophy.
The reasons for their near-perfect season were a strong bowling unit having a good mix of experienced Indian and Overseas bowlers and a comparatively young batting line-up having grit, passion, and determination. There were a few holes in their squad which didn’t let them lift the trophy and they would be looking forward to covering all of those in the IPL Auction 2023.
Rajasthan Royals’ current squad looks like this –
Sanju Samson (c, wk), Jos Buttler (overseas), Devdutt Padikkal, Shimron Hetmyer (overseas), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Dhruv Jurel, Ravichandran Ashwin, Riyan Parag, K C Cariappa, Kuldeep Sen, Kuldip Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Obed McCoy (overseas), Prasidh Krishna, Trent Boult (overseas), Yuzvendra Chahal.
So, the current RR squad looks decent but they have only 16 players in their squad as of now and have to buy a minimum of 2 more players and can buy a maximum of 9 more players in the auction. Out of the 9 spots left, they can still buy 4 more overseas players from the auction pool.
They have INR 13.2 crores left in their kitty and would want to use them wisely. Let’s have a look at their probable playing 11 and the spots that still need to be filled.
Starting from the top, RR has a solid opening combination in Yashasvi Jaiswal and Jos Buttler. They have Devdutt Padikkal at 3, followed by their captain Sanju Samson at 4. Number 5 and 6 positions will be taken care of by Shimron Hetmyer and Riyan Parag.
I think they need someone at 7 who can hit the ball long and will give you 4 overs every day. There are not many players in the auction of this kind but they can go with someone like Shivam Mavi for that place. Their spinners are sorted in Ravichandran Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal.
For 10 and 11, they will play Trent Boult and Prasidh Krishna. Their playing 11 is more or less sorted if they can find a good number 7, who can be overseas too, and a number 6 better than Riyan Parag. They still need to find backups for most of their players as their squad lacks depth as of now. They can also target an overseas spinner as Ashwin in T20Is is not your go-to player.
Rajasthan Royals this time will be hoping for Yashasvi Jaiswal to continue his domestic form and would want all the other batters to perform well if they really need to go all the way this time around. They would also need their Indian bowling core to come to the fore if the overseas players aren’t performing well.
