Rajasthan Royals’ batting coach Vikram Rathour feels there were a lot of positives to take away from the team’s Indian Premier League (IPL) 2025 season opener against Sunrisers Hyderabad despite their loss on Sunday.
Chasing a mammoth target of 287 to win, the Royals fell short in the run chase despite recording their highest team total - 242/6. Sanju Samson (66 off 37 balls) and Dhruv Jurel (70 off 35 balls) led the charge with valiant knocks, while Shimron Hetmyer and Shubham Dubey produced some late fireworks to help the Royals to the record total.
“It was good the way Jurel batted, the way Sanju batted and in the end Hattie (Hetmyer) and Shubham. So there are a lot of pluses. But again, when you are to chase 280, there is pressure on you of course,” Vikram Rathour said at the post-match press conference.
However, the Royals’ chase was derailed early, with the loss of three wickets—Yashasvi Jaiswal, Riyan Parag and Nitish Rana—inside the powerplay, making the already daunting task even harder.
“When you are looking to chase 286 in 20 overs, you have to play positively, you have to play aggressive cricket. Sometimes that makes you play some big shots in the start of your innings, which is not ideal, but that is how it is,” Rathour reasoned.
“So when you are looking to play big shots at the start of your innings, mistakes can happen. Unfortunately, we lost three wickets in the powerplay. Otherwise I think there were a lot of positives as far as the batting inning went,” he added.
Rathour also defended the Royals’ decision to bat first after winning the toss, despite the eventual outcome.
“I wouldn’t say it backfired. The thing was it was pretty hot in the afternoon so we expected the wicket maybe could be a little slow to start with and generally the wickets keep getting better as the day progresses and that happened actually, I mean the wicket was pretty good till the end. So, 30-40 less runs, who knows,” Rathour opined.
It was particularly a hard day in the office for the Royals bowlers but Rathour insisted that the experience will help them grow and come back stronger.
“They will move on. Both our domestic guys bowled really well, Sandeep (Sharma) and Tushar (Deshpande). Our international guys, again, have a lot of experience. They are all good bowlers and are quality bowlers,” Rathour said.
“(Fazalhaq) Farooqi has been one of the better bowlers in T20 cricket for a long time now. So are Jofra (Archer) and (Maheesh) Theekshana. Of course, they had a bad game. But that is expected sometimes during the season. But there is absolutely no doubt that they will come back,” he reckoned.
Rajasthan Royals will face Kolkata Knight Riders in their next IPL 2025 match at the ACA Stadium in Guwahati on Wednesday.
