Trade ins: Ankit Rajpoot, Rahul Tewatia, Mayank Markande
Trade outs: Krishnappa Gowtham, Ajinkya Rahane, Dhawal Kulkarni
Released players: Aryaman Birla, Ashton Turner, Ish Sodhi, Jaydev Unadkat, Liam Livingstone, Oshane Thomas, Prashant Chopra, Rahul Tripathi, Shubham Ranjane, Stuart Binny, Sudhesan Midhun
The pre-auction game
Rajasthan Royals were keen on distancing themselves from the one thing that haunted them in the last two seasons – regressive T20 strategies. The release of Ajinkya Rahane, who is no longer the kind of batsmen T20 cricket entertains, indicates Rajasthan have finally decided to move on from early T20 thinking.
Notably, they were unhappy with their Indian pacers and clearly think wrist spinners are the way to go in T20 cricket. The release of Krishnappa Gowtham, while a tad surprising, indicates RR won’t be drawn into just his powerplay skills (even that lacked in execution a lot of times last season) or hitting abilities when they have more wicket-taking options available. Mayank Markande, in particular, is a fantastic signing for them to pair up with Shreyas Gopal.
Indian pacers, Dhawal Kulkarni and Jaydev Unadkat, were dispensed off and one replacement was immediately done with Ankit Rajpoot a near like-for-like replacement for Kulkarni. He should seal their powerplay bowling woes, especially if the Jaipur wicket seams.
Squad: Ankit Rajpoot, Ben Stokes, Jofra Archer, Jos Buttler, Mahipal Lomror, Manan Vohra, Mayank Markande, Rahul Tewatia, Riyan Parag, Sanju Samson, Shashank Singh, Shreyas Gopal, Steve Smith, Varun Aaron
Slots left: 7 domestic, 4 overseas
Purse remaining: Rs 28.9 crore
What they have
The RR squad has a rather familiar look to it, yet it misses important names although none of them are irreplaceable as such. Perhaps their most surprising release was that of Rahul Tripathi who did a fine job opening the innings two seasons back but was never properly utilised hence.
Manan Vohra could be used as a back-up opener, but, it is highly suspected (from their release of Rahane and Tripathi) that they seek a dynamic top-order batsman to pair up with Jos Buttler, who is set to open from one end.
Riyan Parag and Steven Smith will be the two anchors at either ends of the batting line-up, but they sorely missed a lower-order hitter last season. Ben Stokes will be keen to fulfill his role at no 5 perhaps.
The issue Rajasthan have yet again is that Samson, Smith and Stokes take up three slots in the middle-order with none of them capable of playing a 20-ball 70 kind of innings. They need one more batsman aside from Buttler capable of doing it in the middle-order and hence we might see Samson opening and a dynamic option coming in the middle-order.
Jofra Archer, Ankit Rajpoot and Varun Aaron are their primary seam-up options with Stokes providing back-up. But we can expect them to look at a few domestic seamers as well as one death overs bowler from one of the T20 leagues.
What they sorely need and options
- One big hitting middle-order batsman (Indian or foreign)
— Eoin Morgan, Prabhsimran Singh, Deepak Hooda
- One big hitting top-order batsman
— Chris Lynn, Shimron Hetmyer, Yashasvi Jaiswal
- Two domestic pacers
— Satyajeet Bachhav, Mohit Sharma, Akash Singh, Kartik Tyagi
- One experienced death bowler (ideally foreign and we’ll established in other T20 Leagues)
— Kesrick Williams, Kyle Abbott, Dale Steyn