The Mega Auction is done and dusted and boy that was nothing of a blockbuster weekend for all the cricket addicts. A couple of days changed the lives of many deserving talents across the globe. Despite a major hiccup in the middle (the collapse of auctioneer), the proceedings were conducted smoothly by the BCCI members. Hundreds of crores were spent by the franchises in the search of forming a flexible and competitive squad in which some of them succeeded and some of them failed partially. Here we’ll see a team which had a really successful or rather impressive auction and it's none other than the “RAJASTHAN ROYALS‘’.
BIG BUYS:
They literally had two completely contrasting days at the auction. On the first day they went bang bang straight away from the first set and pouched Hetmyer & Boult for a great amount of money and later they bought Chahal & Ashwin for a decent price and these two may be the steal deal that can turn things around for them.
On the second day, it looked like there were only 9 teams participating in the auction until the last couple of hours.
They bought two highly talented and proven Indian players in P Krishna & D Padikkal for big money.
So out of the ten teams, Royals were the only side which had a settled opening combination (Buttler & Jaiswal). Yet, they surprised everyone by going hard for Padikkal despite having a left-handed Indian opener. They might have Padikkal & Jaiswal opening the innings which allows Buttler to control their middle order. But keeping in mind that the best days for Buttler have come when he has opened the innings, this move might backfire for them later in the competition.
DISAPPOINTMENTS:
The Royals would be really disappointed on not being able to buy back some of their players like Sakriya, Tewatia & Tyagi. They went really hard for them but because of the fact that they had already spent a lot in the first day, they couldn’t bid after a certain point. But still they made sure that they increased the prices for their former players by bidding between two other teams.
MISSING OUT ON ARCHER:
Mumbai Indians surprised everyone by going for J Archer even though his availability is not yet confirmed. The Royals were stunned as well as they couldn’t let him go easily nor buy him either so they fought till the last moment. In fact, when both MI and RR were competing for Archer, Rajasthan just had 9 crores in their purse with 6 more players required to attain the minimum squad size but when the bid reached 8 crores, RR opted out from the contest without any other choice.
SQUAD REVIEW:
The overseas options are looking solid as always and so are their backups. They may have to choose one between Padikkal & Jaiswal because neither of them has batted below 1/2. If they prefer both of them in opening together, then Buttler has to come out of his comfort zone. Their Indian backups lack experience. Except KC Cariappa, no other uncapped Indian player has played an IPL game before. N Saini will act as a backup for Krishna and Hetmyer will continue to do what he did for the Capitals last year in which Livingstone & Miller failed. On a whole, the Royals will consider this auction as a successful one considering the fact that they’ve have enough cover for their overseas recruits as they missed their services last year.
PROBABLE FIRST XI :
Y JAISWAL
D PADIKKAL
S SAMSON (C/WK)
J BUTLER
S HETMYER
R PARAG
J NEESHAM
R ASHWIN
T BOULT
Y CHAHAL
P KRISHNA
They may have Buttler at the top with either Jaiswal or Padikkal making way but anyways the top 4 and the bottom 4 looks solid while no.5, 6 & 7 will require clarity in their roles as all three of them bat in the same gear. They do lack a proper 5th bowling option(Neesham/Parag) where they’ll feel the absence of R Tewatia.
