IPL 2020: Rajasthan Royals – A talented team of stars devoid of positive results
The IPL franchise Rajasthan Royals boasts of some cricketing greats of the modern era in their squad. They have some of the most dangerous and lethal overseas players like former Australian captain Steven Smith, England’s explosive all-rounder Ben Stokes, England’s swashbuckling wicketkeeper-batsman Jos Buttler and aggressive seamer Jofra Archer. However, despite having so much talent and calibre, the franchise has failed to live up to the expectations and produce results they would have fancied.
The Royals had got off to a flying start in the 13th edition of the Indian Premier League by posting a mammoth total of 216 runs against the three-time champion Chennai Super Kings. This was then followed by a high-scoring match against the Kings XI Punjab where Rajasthan Royals had become the first team in the 13-year history of the T20 extravaganza to win a match by scoring as many as 226 runs while batting second.
Never. Give. Up. ?#HallaBol | #RoyalsFamily | #IPL2020 | @apis_india pic.twitter.com/opr27Pdcj5
— Rajasthan Royals (@rajasthanroyals) October 27, 2020
With two big wins in the first two fixtures, Rajasthan looked to be a team to beat in the tournament. However, what started after that was a complete nightmare for the franchise. On the back of the string of poor performances, the team cheaply lost four consecutive matches against Kolkata Knight Riders, Royal Challengers Bangalore, Mumbai Indians and Delhi Capitals respectively.
With the cash-rich league reaching towards its business end, Royals are languishing at the sixth spot in the points table with just 5 wins in 12 fixtures and their chances of making it to the playoffs are hanging by a thread.
Poor batting performance of star players
One of the prime reasons for the failure of the franchise have been the poor form of their batting order. Their batting line-up has been a bit of a puzzle with the changes in the opening pair every now and then. The Royals have tried many combinations but nothing seems to be working for them thus far. Moreover, the captain Steve Smith and star batsman Sanju Samson have been highly inconsistent with the willow and have failed to deliver in the pressure situations.
No strong support to Jofra Archer
Adding to this, the bowling department looks a little weak and imbalanced, especially in the death overs. The spin department is well handled by Shreyas Gopal and Rahul Tewatia. But it is the pace attack that has some loopholes. Rajasthan’s pace spearhead Jofra Archer has been absolutely brilliant thus far both with the new ball and in the death overs. However, Archer hasn’t received the required support from his counterparts Kartik Tyagi, Ankit Rajpoot and Jaydev Unadkat.
Though Royals have some lethal overseas bowling options like Tom Curran, Oshane Thomas, and Andrew Tye, they are unable to utilize them as the four overseas slots in the playing XI are occupied by Archer, Ben Stokes, Smith and Jos Buttler.
Therefore, apart from being consistent with the bat, the franchise needs to make some harsh decisions to provide a much-needed balance to the bowling unit, if they wish to capitalize on the outside chance they have for making it to Top 4 of the points table in IPL 2020.
