Rajasthan Royals was revived from the era of head coach Kumar Sangakkara where the team looked more balanced and consistent. They were the finalists of 2022 season and finished third just in the last season.

Moving to the 2025 season after the mega auction under the coaching duty of former ICT head coach Rahul Dravid, it has now become the second team after CSK to get knocked out of the playoffs race.

So what went wrong for this dramatic fall of Rajasthan Royals this season? Let's discuss.

Questionable Retentions & Bad Auction:

The problems with this franchise started even before the tournament had been started. They retained players like Sanju Samson, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Riyan Parag, Dhruv Jurel, Shimron Hetmyer and Sandeep Sharma. Here, the problems started with whom they let go of in the retentions list including the biggest surprise of letting Jos Buttler go by the franchise.

The other big match winner players like Yuzvendra Chahal who was the highest wicket taker for RR previous season and Trent Boult were released too. Many of us would have analyzed already that releasing Buttler without proper replacement could backfire them and the exact problem persists.

RR was hugely dependent on the heroics of Jos Buttler specially in the clutch run chases which we can clearly see RR struggling bottling 9 runs of 6 balls multiple times this season. The problem is that both Jaiswal and Buttler are on the top 5 run scorers similar to their previous seasons but this time Buttler playing for Gujrat. Now we might have realized whats the blunder here.

Unstable Leadership:

Rajasthan Royals skipper Sanju Samson had been suffering from finger injury from the start of the season by which he had to miss couple of games and played as an impact player in some games. His experience could be very fruitful for the franchise this season too. After playing some matches, he suddenly suffers from an abdomen injury again in midst of batting in the innings and had been ruled out again for some matches.

Due to this reason, Riyan Parag has been playing the skipper's role for most of the matches for Royals this season which doesn't seem to have been fruitful enough. He is still an unexperienced captain and has led to questionable decisions in the field which is again a vital problem for the struggling Royals.

No Support for Jaiswal:

With the previous opener batter Jos Buttler not being in the squad, Sanju Samson and Yashasvi Jaiswal were set to open the innings for Rajasthan. With frequent injury issues, Samson never played matches simultaneously and 14 year old sensation Vaibhav Sooryavanshi came as a replacement to the opening position. Neither Sanju was performing consistently nor Vaibhav had a consistent form in spite of that record breaking century against Gujrat this season until the completion of first 11 matches.

Yashasvi Jaiswal has been consistenly striking at a rate of 150+ and is 4th on the top run getters list. In spite of this performance from Jaiswal, there has been no support from the top and middle orders who has been collapsing all along after his breakthrough.

Weak Spin Options in Middle Overs:

The franchise took the decision of releasing their top wickettaker from previous season Yuzvendra Chahal and bringing in Wanindu Hasaranga as a replacement. They also added Maheesh Theeksana as another spin options for this season but none of them have been performing consistently.

The two Sri Lankan duos have failed to pick those crucial wickets in the middle overs which increases the pressure to the death bowlers. The spinners have failed to cash in for Royals and the investment in Hasaranga and Theeksana as a replacement to Chahal hasn't been provided beneficial enough.

Lacking Finishing:

Rajasthan Royals has faced similar back to back two chasing senarios of 9 runs required of 6 balls against DC and RCB where the same finishers Shimron Hetmyer and Dhruv Jurel were in charge of the chase at the last over. They lost to Capitals in the super over and collapsed to loss against Bangalores simultaneously.

Royals had retained Hetmyer in 9 crores INR and Jurel for 14 crores INR this season who let the team down in a decent runchase scenarios continuously i spite of having enough wickets. This intents and finishing blunders were definitely not the expectations from these top class finishers ahead of the auction.

How can the Rajasthan Royals come out of this situation next season? Feel free to share your views and analytics on it!