The IPL is back, and so are my favourite men in pink. Always worth celebrating, this season is made all the more exciting given the news that next year will be Mega Auction time. In essence, enjoy your teams as they are, because they won’t be round for long.
As a Royals fan, this is a bittersweet feeling. Over the last couple of seasons I’ve grown incredibly fond of this particular squad. From Buttler and Jaiswal at the top to Chahal and Boult at the tail (or technically Boult at 8), there has been plenty to cherish.
After a 2nd place finish in 2022 (as much as I’ve ever enjoyed a franchise cricket season), last season yielded a more frustrating 5th place finish. This squad has one more chance to go all the way, and the hopeless romantic in me has some hope still.
If I had to name one area that I’m especially excited to see in action, it’s the opening partnership. Jos Buttler and Yashasvi Jaiswal, Joswal if you’ll allow it, have a claim to being the strongest opening pair in the entire competition.
In this current cycle, both of these players have enjoyed a mammoth season. Jaiswal’s red-hot starts made for much Royals-based excitement in 2023, and Buttler’s four centuries in 2022 will always be a personal highlight of mine.
What the Royals need now is them to do it at the same time. In Buttler’s dominant 2022, Jaiswal showed flashes of his class but was still very much a player finding his feet. When he stepped up in 2023, Buttler racked up 5 ducks to truly cement that period as the worst in my life.
Instead of another season defined by one opener doing the majority of the legwork (though I wouldn’t say no to Jos doing it again), they need an opening partnership where both players can consistently contribute. In terms of balance, the two make a fine pair.
One is a young left-hander capable of hitting 4s and 6s from the first ball, the other is a seasoned right-hander who has shown his ability to bat long and score on any kind of surface. Both can score rapidly against pace and spin alike, and quite simply both of them are players we know to be top class.
What makes this so important, is the effect it has on the rest of the batting order. Over the last two seasons this has been a team that has struggled to field an eleven with convincing batting depth. This has been a team that has batted Trent Boult at 8. With that being said, there is considerable batting quality outside of the top 2. Let’s talk about Sanju Samson and Shimron Hetmyer.
If the Royals are to go all the way this year, they need a big season from Captain Samson. As a player, Sanju is one often surrounded by ‘what ifs’ and ‘maybes’. He’s India’s nearly man, frequently finding himself limited to series with rotated squads. What the Royals need is for him to take that next step, and establish himself as a player capable of taking his team all the way.
In all fairness to him, this job would become simpler if Jaiswal and Buttler can both have strong seasons. Samson is more than capable of steadying the ship but often performs at his best when he is tasked with following up a fast start. This assessment is even more applicable to Shimron Hetmyer’s role in this team.
Hetmyer is a star when it comes to finishing an innings off in style. With five or so overs left to go he will go out there and pile on the misery, what you want to avoid is a situation where he gets stuck in the middle of an innings. The Royals have been comfortable when it comes to manipulating his entry point to get the most out of him. If the top 3 bat long, he’ll come straight in at 4. If early wickets tumble, he might be moved to as low as 7.
To this point it might sound like the Royals have nothing to worry about if they have 4 players of such high quality, the issue is with what comes next. More specifically, that there is not always anything that comes next.
An issue that has plagued this team has been what happens if the top order fails, unlike other outfits there is not a middle order here that threatens to make things difficult let alone a tail.
The middle order has been the area where we have seen the most tinkering, with efforts to use Riyan “this year is his year I swear” Parag, Ravichandran “No.3” Ashwin, about a million overseas players who I will curse forever, and most recently Dhruv Jurel.
Of these, it is Jurel who offers the most hope for me. In 2023, Jurel showed the potential to be a player who can come in and hit some boundaries, and to dangerously cross formats, showed his quality with the bat most recently against England.
Where some teams seem to field a team filled with all-rounders, this is a side that relies heavily on specialist players. You would think that the Impact Sub rule would help mitigate the risks of this, but this was something that the Royals failed to make the most of last season.
Finally, we reach the bowlers. If the average Royals bowling experience was a movie it would have a gripping start, go a bit astray but show some further promise in the middle, before offering the most appallingly wayward ending you could ever dream of. In Rajasthan it’s fair to say that death bowling exists as an idea more than a reality.
Look, there is nothing quite like a Trent Boult opening spell when he’s on it. The ball will move, the bails will light up, I will get my hopes far too high. The issue is that the Royals struggle to follow up on this and finish a team off.
This season’s answer appears to be Avesh Khan, but to paraphrase a certain singer-songwriter “I think I’ve seen this film before, and I didn’t like the ending”. Apart from Obed McCoy sometimes doing it in 2022, several players have struggled to win games for the Royals with ball in hand at the back end of an innings. I will simply go back to my usual method of coping, putting my head in my hands and saying “surely they can’t lose it from here” (they can xoxo Sandeep Sharma v Sunrisers).
In terms of spin, there is much less up for debate. Chahal, Ashwin, and Zampa will all shine at some point of the season. I say this now in the full knowledge that watching Chahal bowl is often trying not to lose your mind as he tosses the ball up, it gets hammered, so he tosses it up even more and ends up with a wicket. It might not be pretty, but a wicket’s a wicket.
As much as each of these men have driven me to utter despair at some point in the last two seasons, it would be heartbreaking to see this team fail to win a trophy. So please boys, go out there and do it. I promise I’ll be nice to you still next year no matter where you end up (even Sunrisers).
