It’s another IPL season and another Rajasthan Royals campaign that started with a flicker and ended in disappointment. For a team that at one point looked to be the rightful heir to their dominant previous IPL reign, RR’s voyage this year was more “what could have been” than it was “what a team.” If there were an award for confusing strategy, excessive misfire dependence, or just the feeling of shallow disappointment, it would have felt like the same RR, just messier. So why exactly did it go wrong? Let’s sift through the wreckage and see how a group with so much potential ended the season on the couch watching the playoffs. Spoiler: it wasn’t just bad luck.
A Confused Core and an Identity Crisis
A lack of clarity at the center of everything, like roles, strategy, and team identity, was at the heart of RR’s struggles this season. Whereas most successful IPL teams have a core group of all-rounders in balance and patterned identities, RR committed to a strategy of omission – they threw the rule book away. Their playing XI was comprised of two teams, and in some cases, too many openers in a batting-dominant top order, and the bowling was not as formidable as it had been in previous years.
Despite the availability of the impact player rule, RR adopted an inflexible approach—five bowlers, six batters, no alternative. This is always a risky situation in T20s where flexibility is currency. In their search for the mythical all-rounder they had never had, they moved Ravichandran Ashwin up the order, merely showing their cluelessness. They didn’t build on success from previous years; they removed some of their success and constructed something more confusing than the puzzle where the pieces don’t fit.
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Batting Bets That Didn’t Pay Off
RR’s faith in the depth of Indian batsmen was commendable, certainly on paper. In the field? It was a foolish gamble. RR went all-in with Jaiswal, Samson, Riyan Parag, and Dhruv Jurel to do the bulk of the scoring, because yes, Jaiswal had his moments, and Samson showed a few good innings, but the others did not explode when it counted.
Parag and Jurel, specifically, were disappointing. Jurel’s retention for a whopping ₹14 crore was questioned with performances like that, and the CM could not justify the management’s faith in him all season long. The impact player rule should have given these batters the ability to play expressive innings, but it did the opposite.
When “Too Many Options” Becomes a Problem
One of the most perplexing aspects of RR’s campaign was their team composition. By the end of the season, they had eight overseas players in their squad and realized they couldn’t even get half of them into the playing XI. The Pretorius signing was still a good one, and this just made what was already going to be a difficult selection process even more difficult.
Shimron Hetmyer, their best finisher by a distance, was bizarrely held back on so many occasions. Why, then, would anyone sign a match-winner yet not utilize him to great effect? If you’re asking that question, you are not alone. The RR think tank, once they realized the errors of their ways, were way too late and out of contention, and suddenly it felt like they had found a place for more overseas players.
Will they find the right pieces and back certain players into their appropriate roles, or will next season be another instance of promise being misplaced? Time (and hopefully some intelligent auctions) will tell.
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