Rajasthan Royals - Strengths and Weaknesses | IPL 2020

With this year’s edition of IPL well underway, fans have been gearing up to watch their favorite players and teams in action. Bettors are busy finding the best IPL betting sites online in order to search favorable odds and place wagers. Although a bit late, the tournament came just in time to provide much-needed entertainment for the cricket fans.

Each team has formed their squads by retaining their top performers, releasing the laggards, and buying up talent which they feel might help them to make it till the end of the tournament. Let us today look at one such team, the Rajasthan Royals.

The Royals, who were probably the weakest team on paper, surprised everyone by emerging as the winners of the inaugural season of the IPL. But since then, they have had a somewhat bumpy ride in the following seasons, reaching the semi-finals on 3 occasions. In 2015, following the Lodha committee report, the franchise was disqualified for two years and did not play the 2016 and 2017 seasons.  However, all that has been left in the past now, and the Royals are raring to have a go with a very good line up.

The strengths

Good overseas players

The Royals have spent well on their overseas acquisitions with a nice balance of batsmen, all-rounders, and bowlers. They have batsmen like David Miller and Jos Buttler at the top, Steve Smith to strengthen the middle order, amazing all-rounders in Ben Stokes and Tom Curran, and a world-class bowler in Jofra Archer.

A great pace attack

While the majority of bowling duties will be shouldered by Jofra Archer, Jaydev Unadakat, Varun Aron, and Ankit Rajpoot, overseas players Andrew Tye and Oshane Thomas can fill in when needed.

A strong middle order

While in the previous seasons, the middle order of RR appeared to be weak, with the addition of Robin Uthappa and Yashasvi Jaiswal, they have looked to strengthen it this time around, along with the reliable Sanju Samson.

Good domestic players

They have picked up probably the best domestic player available for this season, in Yashasvi Jaiswal, who can prove to be a match-winner. Along with Jaiswal, they have some capable domestic players in the form of two wrist spinners Mayank Markande and Rahul Tewatia. Riyan Parag was impressive in last season too and can provide a much-needed boost down the batting line up.

Weaknesses

Lack of Indian Match winners

The Rajasthan team has invested heavily in foreign players, and in the process, the team had to become heavily reliant on them. Tom Curran and Ben Stokes are solid all-rounders and potential match winners. But with uncertainty over when Steve Smith and Ben Stokes will be able to join the side due to their international commitments, it does leave the side with some amount of vulnerabilities.

Lack of spin options

While the team has a decent amount of firepower in the pace department, the team heavily lacks spin options. They have four leg spinners in the squad and just one off-spinner in the form of Riyan Parag. The wrong ones of the leg spinners won’t be of much use against the left-handed batsmen on slow wickets of the UAE, and that’s when they will have to rely heavily either on the bit inexperienced Riyan Parag or the pacers.

Form of Indian pacers

Jaydev Unadkat was picked up by Rajasthan at the 2018 auctions for a whopping 11.5 crores, making him the most expensive Indian player for that season. But he is yet to prove his worth, with mediocre performances in the subsequent games. However, riding on the back of strong performances in the latest Ranji tournament, he is likely to have gained some much-needed confidence.

In conclusion, although with its weaknesses, the squad of RR looks much balanced at least on paper, with a lot of bench strength.