Rajasthan Royals who made the playoffs only once in the last four years needed to start with a fresh mind and that is what they did by just retaining three key players ahead of the Mega Auction. Over the last four years, they have used multiple captains but finally have decided to stick with Sanju Samson who is slowly making his Indian comeback. Rajasthan Royals retained Sanju Samson for 14 CR, Jos Buttler who will be the vice-captain for 10 CR, and the young left-handed opener Yashasvi Jaiswal for 4 CR. They had three out of their top four batsmen from the playing XI even before the Auction started. They had to release Jofra Archer due to his injury issues and opted not to retain Ben Stokes who has decided to opt-out of IPL 2022.
Rajasthan Royals who had a purse of 62 CR at the start of the Auction were very active in the marquee set as they bought R Ashwin for 5 CR and the Kiwi left-arm pacer Trent Boult for 8 CR. In the next set, they bought two left-handed batters – Shimron Hetmyer who has been out of the West Indies side due to his fitness for 8.5 CR, and Devdutt Padikkal for 7.75 CR. Even though Padikkal is an opener, he is going to bat at No. 3 according to the Rajasthan Royals CEO. They broke their bank for Prasidh Krishna as they bought him for 10 CR who had done well in the India-West Indies ODI series. RR managed to get one of the steals of the Auction as they got Yuzvendra Chahal who is India’s leading leg-spinner for just 6.5 CR. RR had a pretty non-existent spin attack in the last couple of years and so bought two high-quality Indian spinners in Ashwin and Chahal. They bought back Riyan Parag for 3.8 CR to finish Day 1.
On Day 2, they started off by getting Navdeep Saini for 2.6 CR but were fairly quiet for a long time. They bought a few backups and a few Indian uncapped players for cheap prices in between but had only four overseas players even after the first accelerated process. In fact, RR had managed to buy only four overseas players before the last round of the Auction began. In the last round, they bought James Neesham for 1.5 CR, Daryll Mitchell for 75 Lakhs, Nathan Coulter Nile for 2 CR, and Rassie Van Der Dussen for 1 CR. They bought four overseas players in four minutes and all at base price. Finally, they completed a squad of 24 players with eight overseas players.
RR’s Full Squad: Sanju Samson, Jos Buttler*, Yashasvi Jaiswal, R Ashwin, Trent Boult*, Shimron Hetmyer*, Devdutt Padikkal, Prasidh Krishna, Yuzvendra Chahal, Riyan Parag, KC Cariappa, Navdeep Saini, Obed McCoy*, Anunay Singh, Kuldeep Sen, Karun Nair, Shubham Gharwal, Dhruv Jurel, Kuldip Yadav, Tejas Baroka, James Neesham*, Daryl Mitchell*, Nathan Coulter Nile*, Rassie van der Dussen*
Total Squad Size: 24 – 16 Indians and 8 Overseas
Purse Remaining: 0.95 CR
Probable Playing XI: Jos Buttler*, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Devdutt Padikkal, Sanju Samson (C, WK), Shimron Hetmyer*, Riyan Parag, James Neesham* / Nathan Coulter Nile*, R Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, Trent Boult*, Prasidh Krishna
