CHENNAI: A few weeks before the beginning of this season of the Indian Premier League (IPL), Rajasthan Royals’ Director of Cricket, Kumar Sangakkara, gave an interview to the in-house media. “I think we managed to identify the key areas which needed our attention,” he had told them.
“(...) we have got the two best spinners in the IPL in terms of off-spin and leg-spin in (Yuzvendra) Chahal and (Ravichandran) Ashwin. We have (Trent) Boult, Prasidh (Krishna), (Navdeep) Saini, (Nathan) Coulter-Nile, (Obed) McCoy, which makes up for a very exciting pace unit supported by of course the retentions of Yashasvi (Jaiswal), (Sanju) Samson and (Jos) Buttler. We have secured depth in every department...” he added.
A week into the IPL season and, according to the initial impressions of this new-look team, Sangakkara seems to have been proved right. After a resounding 61-run win over Sunrisers Hyderabad to begin their campaign, they were relatively comfortable in their 23-run win over Mumbai Indians on Saturday.
This team is building from the ground up. Skipper Samson had already spoken about the way he wants the team to approach the game but without clearly defined player roles and conveying that message to them — both Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians are reliably world-class at this — all franchises are only as strong as their weakest link.
In previous seasons one could even argue that Royals had better individual players (Ben Stokes and Jofra Archer readily come to mind) but this side is more rounded. The overseas players in the side complement the Indians. The role clarity is evident this time out. They only played three overseas players on Saturday, as Coulter-Nile made way for Navdeep Saini.
Even when they began on the back foot without a ball being bowled — Samson lost the toss — they trusted their process. It always helps when there is an opener like Buttler, the batter who has contributed to redefining the grammar of this format. Even accounting for the fact that he always punishes Mumbai (300 runs in five innings before this match), he was at his boundary-hitting best.
But he picked on the bowlers and only went after the ones who he thought would yield maximum rewards with minimum risk. Here’s a number to ram home that point. Against Jasprit Bumrah, who was as outstanding as his 3/17 suggests, he well left deliveries and didn’t try anything expansive. Out of his 100 off 68, he scored only 11 off 15 against the Indian pacer. He used the other bowlers to set the game up. For example, Basil Thampi went for 26 off six. If Buttler took care of the opening 15 overs, a barely believable 35 off 14 from Shimron Hetmyer meant Mumbai were chasing 194.
The pitch was good and they were on course to run it down with balls to spare. That’s when the Royals played both their trump cards, established Indian spinners. And both Ashwin and Chahal showed the value on Saturday. Between them, they picked up three for 56 in eight largely tight overs in the middle phase of the Mumbai innings.
Brief scores: RR 193/8 in 20 ovs (Buttler 100; Bumrah 3/17) beat MI 170/8 in 20 ovs (Varma 61, Kishan 54; Chahal 2/26).