The 18th season of the Indian Premier League in 2025 has completely gone south for the Rajasthan Royals, with only 3 wins in 11 matches played.
After a poor 2/3rd of the season, where they are now out of the playoff race, a lot of questions are being asked by the fans and experts about the plans and auction strategy ahead of the season.
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The head coach of the RR, Rahul Dravid, has spoken up on the planning that went behind retaining their set of players and notably, snubbing Jos Buttler.
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Did Rahul Dravid and co. fail in planning retentions?
Ahead of the IPL 2025 auction in Jeddah, back in November, the Royals retained captain Sanju Samson and Yashasvi Jaiswal for 18 crore each, Riyan Parag and Dhruv Jurel for 14 each, Shimron Hetmyer for 11 crore and Sandeep Sharma for 4 crore.
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As they decided to let go of Jos Buttler, Dravid explained the decision of backing only one overseas batter in Hetmyer and the rest of the Indian core.
"We retained a lot of our young and exciting Indian talent that we had. It is pretty good talent. We have Sanju, Riyan, Dhruv and Jaiswal—in that we got young Indian talent, so, obviously, after having that Indian talent, we had to compromise somewhere and the place where we were willing to make it was the overseas talent," Dravid told Star Sports.
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"So we retained one overseas death overs finisher that we had. So, I don't think in our combination, we could have played two overseas batters in any case. It was suited around having one overseas batter and three bowlers," he concluded.
How have the retained RR players performed in IPL 2025?
Yashasvi Jaiswal is RR's best batter of the season with 439 runs in 11 innings at a strike rate of 154.03 and 5 fifties.
The only retained overseas batter, Hetmyer, has failed to make a huge impact with 187 runs in 10 innings.
| Batter | Innings | Runs | Avg/SR | Highest | 50/100 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yashasvi Jaiswal | 11 | 439 | 43.90/154.03 | 75 | 5/- |
| Riyan Parag | 11 | 282 | 31.33/160.22 | 43* | -/- |
| Dhruv Jurel | 10 | 249 | 35.57/147.33 | 70 | 1/- |
| Sanju Samson | 7 | 224 | 37.33/143.58 | 66 | 1/- |
| Shimron Hetmyer | 10 | 187 | 20.77/150.80 | 81 | 1/- |
Sandeep Sharma has taken 9 wickets in 10 matches at an economy rate of 9.89 in 10 with best figures of 2/21.
| Bowler | Innings | Overs | Wickets | Avg/SR | Economy | Best Figures |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sandeep Sharma | 10 | 36.3 | 9 | 40.11/24.33 | 9.89 | 2/20 |