After losing five of their first six matches, Rajasthan Royals are quickly falling out of contention for this year’s IPL playoffs. Patrick Noone looks at the struggling franchise’s key problems.
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Rajasthan Royals have endured a difficult campaign in this year’s IPL. Their only victory has been against fellow strugglers Royal Challengers Bangalore and, while they have come close on a couple of occasions to add to that solitary win, the men in pink have a mountain to climb in the second half of the competition if they are to make it into the playoffs. So, where has it all gone wrong for Rajasthan?
WEAKEST SQUAD
According to CricViz’s projected Impact scores at the start of the IPL, Rajasthan were always going to be in for a tough season. The model rated them as the eighth best squad in the competition and that was before considering the likely absentees at the back end of the tournament, because of their overseas players having to join up with their respective national teams ahead of the World Cup.
That over was perhaps an extreme example of Rajasthan’s problems with the ball at the death, but it was indicative of a wider malaise that has plagued them throughout the campaign. Stokes, in particular, is becoming an issue during that phase of the innings; only Bhuvneshwar Kumar has bowled as many balls at the death and recorded a worse economy than Stokes’ 13.16. Both Dhawal Kulkarni and Jaydev Unadkat had bowled economically against Chennai and both had an over of their allocation remaining, yet Stokes was thrown the ball despite his poor record in the last five overs.
It all amounts to the fact that Rajasthan are the most expensive team during the death overs and, as a result, are struggling to see out matches that they are otherwise in control of. That happened on Thursday, as well as in their previous meeting with Chennai and against Kings XI Punjab in their opening fixture; on both occasions, Rajasthan leaked runs that meant they were chasing a more formidable target that they would ultimately fall short of reaching.
SEAMERS’ LACK OF PENETRATION
One of the causes of Rajasthan’s woes at the back end of the innings has been their inability to take wickets earlier on, allowing set batsmen to cash in at the death. While Shreyas Gopal, the Royals’ frontline spinner, has picked up six wickets with an economy rate of 7.00 in the middle overs, he has not been backed up by the seam bowling department.
Between overs 7 and 15, Rajasthan have opted to bowl seam 45.5% of the time, the third highest in the competition behind Mumbai Indians and Sunrisers Hyderabad. That is strange given that Jaipur has been one of the slowest tracks in the IPL this season, yet Rajasthan have persisted with their quicks despite none of them being able to take wickets on a regular basis throughout that phase of the innings.
Jofra Archer has recorded an economy rate of 7.00 but is yet to take a wicket in the middle overs, while Stokes, Unadkat and Kulkarni have leaked runs consistently with economy rates of 8.93, 11.42 and 11.33, respectively. Those numbers are nowhere near good enough and it is no surprise that they have had the domino effect of weakening the Royals’ death bowling as well.
