OPINION
Follow UsAfter winning four of their first five matches, Rajasthan Royals were flying high at the top of the table. In their sixth game of the season, their first in Jaipur, they restricted Lucknow to 154 after opting to bowl and looked well on their way to becoming the first side to hit double digits in terms of points. For the Royals, a spot in the playoffs looked like a formality at the halfway point of that particular encounter.
But 16 days later, here they are. Sanju Samson’s side have lost four of their last five clashes, including the fateful LSG clash they were expected to ‘cruise’, and could realistically find themselves at sixth spot by the end of the weekend.
How has it come to this? How have RR, who looked like the best team in the competition 30 games into the season, fallen off a cliff in a fortnight?
For the RR batters, it’s been a tale of two halves
Between them, across the first five matches of this season, Buttler, Samson and Hetmyer ransacked 544 runs at an average of 49.45 and S.R of 170.53.
Yashasvi Jaiswal did not set the stage on fire per se, with head-turning performances, but he absolutely scorched bowlers in the powerplay: after five matches, he’d amassed 93 runs in overs 1-6 at a SR of 163.2, smashing a boundary every three balls. No other batter in the league, in this period, struck boundaries inside the powerplay more frequently than Jaiswal.
These devastating returns enabled the side to go on a rampage. They smashed Hyderabad by 72 runs in their first match and then, by the end of their fifth match, ended up conquering both Ahmedabad and Chennai, regarded the two toughest away fixtures in the competition.
Post the famous chase against Gujarat, however, their entire batting line-up minus Jaiswal has gone AWOL.
The seniors have been shocking: Buttler, Samson and Hetmyer have all averaged under 20 in RR’s last five matches with the once-dependable Hetmyer proving to be the worst of the lot, averaging 5.6 at a strike rate of 60.9.
Outside Jaiswal, in the last five matches, RR’s batters have averaged 16.72 while losing a wicket every 13.82 balls.
The reverse fixture against GT on Friday laid bare RR’s issues.
Jaiswal bailed the side out with the bat against both CSK and MI but post the 21-year-old’s ill-fated run-out, the Royals folded against the defending champs.
47/1 at one stage, RR lost their last nine wickets in Jaipur for the addition of just 71 runs post Jaiswal’s run-out, with all of Buttler, Samson, Hetmyer, Paddikal, Parag and even Ashwin continuing to underperform with the bat.
It is not uncommon for teams to have individuals’ form fluctuate mid-season, but 90% of the batting line-up collectively losing form has hurt RR immeasurably.
The impact of the same could have been mitigated had the all-rounders (Ashwin / Holder) and the young Indian batters (Padikkal and Parag) stepped up like Jaiswal did, but disaster has ensued thanks to Jaiswal receiving no support whatsoever.
Trent Boult is no longer striking up-front, and it’s hurting the side
Across his first four games in IPL 2023, Boult took five powerplay wickets at an average of 10.6. That might not look eye-popping, but here’s the catch: each of the five wickets came in the very first over of the opponent’s innings. In other words, Boult almost always gave RR a headstart with the ball, and that allowed the other bowlers to settle.
The other bowlers combinedly averaged 82.5 in the powerplay but it didn’t matter, for such was the potency of Boult’s spells.
Across the last five matches, however, Boult’s wickets with the new ball have dried up, and that has hurt RR. Big time.
Since April 19 (the LSG clash), Boult has taken just 2 wickets in the powerplay at an average of 47.00. His economy in the phase has also shot up to 8.5 from 5.9, and he’s managed to take just a solitary wicket in the first over of the innings as compared to the five he managed in his first four matches.
Again, RR would not have borne the brunt of Boult’s dip in form had the other bowlers stepped up, but that has not happened: the rest have managed just 2 powerplay wickets between them in 19 overs, averaging an eye-watering 77.
Lack of wickets up-front have had an unwanted trickle-down effect: RR have gone from being the joint fourth-most economical side in the 7-15 phase in their first five games (E.R 8.1) to being the second-most expensive bowling unit in the middle overs (E.R 9.4) in their last five games.
Rajasthan have not been maximizing the Impact Player rule
At the start of the season, many believed that Rajasthan would be the biggest beneficiary of the Impact Player rule. But with 70% of the league stage done, Samson’s side remain the only franchise to not have cracked the Impact Player code.
Maximizing the Impact Player rule is easy, especially with the regulations allowing captains to name their XI after the toss. If you bat first, you load your team up with an extra batter. You then sub out one specialist batter after the first innings and bring in a bowler.
Likewise, if you bowl first, you load your team up with an extra bowler. You bring in a potent specialist batter for the second innings.
RR’s usage of the Impact Player rule has been bizarre, to say the least.
In the clash against GT on Friday, despite opting to bat first, they did not have an extra batter (Riyan Parag) in the XI. Instead, they started with all of Boult, Zampa, Sandeep and Chahal in the XI and subbed-in Parag after the fall of the third wicket.
Perhaps the management wanted to be dynamic with the usage of the Impact Player — say, bringing in a Murugan Ashwin in the second innings — but why complicate things? Why not stack your batting and give your batters full freedom to begin with? After all, that’s what every other side has been doing, and that’s yielded pretty good results.
In the XI that started the match, RR had Boult listed at #8, with one of the other seven batters being Ashwin. It is very much possible that the lack of depth might have subconsciously influenced the mindset of the batters.
In the LSG clash, they only used five bowlers — when they could have used six and subbed one out for a batter in the second innings — while against RCB, they bizarrely subbed-in Abdul Basith with 10 runs needed off 2 balls. Again, in that encounter too, RR used just the five bowlers.
Considering Samson’s side lost the LSG and RCB fixtures by 10 runs and 7 runs respectively, could it be possible that they actually ended up conceding over-par with the ball? Having an extra bowler might not have changed things drastically but it certainly would have given Samson another option up his sleeve, rather than having no choice but to bowl out everyone — even the ones having a bad day.
What’s clear is that the RR management should really re-think their Impact Player strategy; it’s been an evident bust thus far.
The Sawai Mansingh is negating two key strengths of the side
Unfortunately for RR, the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur is negating two key strengths of theirs.
They ideally want Boult wreaking havoc up-front but conditions in Jaipur have been the worst across venues for pacers in the powerplay.
3 matches in, seamers at the Sawai Mansingh in the powerplay have averaged 250 (!!). Pacers have taken a solitary wicket in the first six across 30 overs. It surely can’t be a matter of skill, can it?
This could, in part, explain the dip in Boult’s returns in the powerplay. In the first half of the season, he played each of his four matches outside Jaipur. In the second half, he’s played two of his four games at the Sawai Mansingh.
On the batting front, meanwhile, RR possess a line-up that loves pace on the ball but the slow and low conditions of Jaipur don’t aid the side’s batters in any way.
Jaipur has the fourth-lowest E.R for spinners at a venue in IPL 2023 (7.6) and while it’s proven to be a boon for the RR tweakers, it’s simultaneously nullified the strength of the team’s batters, as was evident on Friday against GT and also earlier in the clash against LSG. The conditions have been such that even pace, at times, has been very hard to put away.
Without question, the RR batters (and Boult) would be more interested in the Eden and Dharamshala fixtures as compared to the remaining two home matches at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium.
