RR coach refuses to confess group’s blunder in IPL 2025 public sale

It is safe to say that the auction strategy of Rajasthan Royals has backfired badly in IPL 2025. On Thursday, RR became the second side to be eliminated from the playoffs race, even though there are still 20 matches left in the league stage. The team’s decision to release experienced stars and instead pick youngsters hasn’t quite yielded the results they would have expected. But what is baffling is the team’s decision to justify their picks despite a miserable performance.

RR refuse to accept auction blunder

On Thursday, following the loss to MI, RR fielding coach Dishant Yagnik claimed that the team doesn’t buy superstars, but creates them. Contrary to his claim, RR has hardly seen any youngster taste much success in IPL 2025. The retained players include – Sanju Samson, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Riyan Parag, Dhruv Jurel and Sandeep Sharma.

While most of the teams followed a sane retention policy, RR somewhat failed to do so. How? By releasing the likes of Jos Buttler, Avesh Khan, Yuzvendra Chahal, Trent Boult among others. Majority of the marquee players released by RR have gone on to do exceptionally well for their new franchises.

“They became stars at our franchise. The current bunch, we’re confident that they will become stars, we’ll make them stars. We don’t buy superstars, we make superstars, that’s our tagline,” the RR coach said.

Buttler, who was one of RR’s most consistent batters, was released without a second thought by RR. What happened next? He was picked up GT and showed stellar consistency so far while batting at number 3. The move to release him is the most baffling choice made by RR.

“Time has come for us to look beyond such things (regretting not retaining players like Buttler). When we don’t have them, we have to forget and move on. Now we have Vaibhav, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sanju Samson is our captain. We’ll go ahead with this side and we’ll prove our winning ability with this side,” Yagnik said.

Next is the experienced Chahal. The spinner recently went on to pick his second hat-trick in the IPL, and already has 13 wickets to his name. Avesh Khan was picked up by LSG and he has turned out to be their go-to bowler in the death overs. Another baffling choice was to let go of Trent Boult, who has already taken 16 wickets in 11 games for MI so far.

How have RR’s “young retained stars and auction picks” fared

Barring Yashasvi Jaiswal, and Dhruv Jurel to a certain extent, none of RR’s retained players have managed to make any impact. Especially, the duo of Riyan Parag and Shimron Hetmyer.

The team decided to invest in 14-year-old Vaibhav Suryavanshi. And it paid off as the youngster managed to score the second fastest hundred in IPL history. However, it came at a point where RR were all but out of the tournament. What happened in the very next game? He was dismissed for a 2-ball duck. This shows why RR needed more experienced players than just blindly backing youngsters.

Sanju Samson unavailability for the majority of IPL 2025 also affected RR badly. Jaiswal started the season off on a poor note but managed to rediscover his form at a later stage, which also happened to be too late.