The Rajasthan Royals were ultimately unable to secure the second position. Their league stage campaign ended in disappointment as they lost four straight games and their chance to advance to the final two with a fifth game washed away by rain.
Sanju Samson’s team has a lot of work ahead of them before they play the high-flying Royal Challengers Bengaluru in Ahmedabad during the Playoffs.
Is Tom Kohler-Cadmore able to step into the big roles?
Even though Jos Buttler’s IPL season wasn’t the best by his usual standards, he still managed to amass 359 runs at a strike rate of 141, which is about seven points lower than his overall IPL strike rate but still manages to hang with the majority of T20 batters. He also scored two match-winning hundreds during 11 games. RR now have a large hole at the top when he returned to focus on his England international obligations. This was evident in Tom Kohler-Cadmore’s lackluster IPL debut in Guwahati.
Naturally, RR was aware of Buttler’s absence for the knockout stages and had been quietly preparing Kohler-Cadmore, as disclosed by both Kumar Sangakkara and Riyan Parag. However, as they demonstrated against the Punjab Kings the other evening, replacing Buttler won’t be easy. RR would need the Englishman to extract every last bit of experience he has for the Eliminator, but fortunately, he comes in with some.
T20 career of Tom Kohler-Cadmore:
| Innings | Runs | Avg | SR | 100s/50s | HS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 188 | 4752 | 27.95 | 139.27 | 1/34 | 127 |
Blues with a bat first
Although head coach and director of RR, Kumar Sangakkara, downplayed the problem, his team has been worried about batting first. They have batted first in three of their five losses this season, and in high-scoring games, their average first-inning score is 172, which is second-worst behind Punjab Kings. They would wish to get better at this area as they scored 141/5 against the Chennai Super Kings and 144/9 against PBKS in their last two games when they batted first.
Naturally, it hasn’t helped that they typically bat first with three foreign players, opting to use the fourth player as a bowler rather than a batsman. With the exception of the game against PBKS, when Donovan Ferreira was brought in, RR employed Nandre Burger as the Impact Player three times and Keshav Maharaj once in the five games in which they batted first.
Lately, Yuzvendra Chahal has
The legspinner’s outstanding play in the first few weeks of the IPL provided RR the confidence to soar and win a lot of games, but a small decline in form has had a significant impact on the points table. Chahal took 11 wickets in the first six games of the season, but in the following seven games, he only took six, and his economy and strike rate were significantly poorer. The fact that R Ashwin appears to have red-hot control with the ball will excite RR, and they would like for Chahal to do the same during this pivotal week.
Batters running out of steam
This season, Riyan Parag has improved greatly, amassing 531 runs in a breakthrough campaign at No. 4. Although he is just 94 runs away from becoming the most runs scored by an uncapped batter in a season, RR hasn’t crossed the finish line with him by alone. The other batters must contribute as well, particularly those who had a strong season but have seen their play drastically decline on pitches that have, to be fair, slowed down in the later stages of this competition.
RR hitters in the previous four losses:
| Player | Inngs | Runs | Avg | SR | 50+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| R Parag | 4 | 199 | 66.33 | 142.14 | 1 |
| S Samson | 4 | 119 | 29.75 | 143.37 | 1 |
| Y Jaiswal | 4 | 99 | 24.75 | 147.76 | 1 |
| R Powell | 3 | 44 | 14.66 | 146.66 | 0 |
| J Buttler | 3 | 40 | 13.33 | 93.02 | 0 |
| R Ashwin | 4 | 33 | 16.50 | 132.00 | 0 |
| D Jurel | 3 | 29 | 9.66 | 131.81 | 0 |
| S Dubey | 2 | 25 | 12.50 | 192.30 | 0 |
| T Kohler-Cadmore | 1 | 18 | 18.00 | 78.26 | 0 |
| D Ferreira | 2 | 8 | 4.00 | 72.72 | 0 |
(Devadu Narayanan provided contributions.)
