Co-owner Manoj Badale opines on Rajasthan Royals’ auction performance

The ongoing IPL 2022 mega auction has seen some dramatic bidding duels between various franchises. With the two new franchises entering the fray, the Lucknow Super Giants and the Gujarat Titans, the bidding has gotten more intense than ever.

The wicketkeeper-batter Ishan Kishan bagged the highest deal in this year’s auction up till now, going for INR 15.25 crore to Mumbai Indians. While there were some high bids, there were also some shocking unsold players as well. Suresh Raina, one of the legends in the competition and also known as Mr. IPL, found no takers.

One of the teams that would feel they had a satisfactory outing up till now in the mega auction is Rajasthan Royals. They made some strategical purchases which included a few big names. The Royals had a topsy-turvy season plagued by injuries last year under the captaincy of Sanju Samson. They finished at 7th position and will be looking forward to making it to the playoffs, something they haven’t been able to do since 2018 when they lost to KKR in the eliminator.

We’re pretty pleased with where we’re at: RR owner Manoj Badale

Having retained skipper Sanju Samson, wicketkeeper-batter Jos Buttler and opening batter Yashaswi Jaiswal, the Royals added some big names into their squad like Ravichandran Ashwin, Devdutt Padikkal, Shimron Hetmyer and Trent Boult.

When asked about how he would rate RR’s day at the auction during a press conference, co-owner Manoj Badale said: “It’s been a pretty dramatic morning. It’s been a busy morning. We’re pretty pleased with where we’re at. We’ve got a gun batting lineup now.”

“We like Devdutt Padikkal because he plays spin particularly well and fills that number three slot, with Sanju batting four this year. Shimron Hetmyer is a player we’ve admired for many, many years, and he has that real ability to play pace and spin at the back of the innings. So we just need some bowlers now. I’m pretty pleased with (Ravichandran) Ashwin. We were expecting him to go for a lot more than that. So that’s a real scoop. We just need to get some leg-spin and some pace, otherwise, we’ll have to get Warnie (Shane Warne) out of retirement (chuckles).”