Rajasthan Royals head coach Paddy Upton is of the opinion that they haven’t been able to pick the right combination in the tournament so far which has resulted in their lacklustre performance in the tournament so far. Rajasthan suffered their 6th loss of the tournament after their defeat at the hands of Kings XI Punjab yesterday. They are just above Royal Challengers Bangalore in the points table with 2 wins from 8 games.
Paddy Upton was not happy with the way Rajasthan has performed and he feels that the team isn’t clicking as an XI which isn’t helping them. Rajasthan Royals needs to win all their remaining games to harbour hopes of going through to the playoffs. However, it will take a lot of doing for Rajasthan to make it possible.
“We are not quite clicking as an eleven and that is costing us. You can’t always have all eleven players in-form all the time. You want to give people a chance to settle into their roles to find their feet,” Paddy Upton said after the 12-run loss to KXIP on Tuesday.
“We kept the team pretty consistent for a long time, but it wasn’t quite clicking in some of the areas. We need to make some changes to search for that right combination. Every game we are falling just a little bit short either with one or two overs with the ball or with the bat.”
Following yet another disappointing loss from the Rajasthan Royals, Paddy Upton hailed the likes of Ravichandran Ashwin and Murugan Ashwin who did a great job by restricting the Rajasthan Royals in the 2nd half of the match.
“The two Ashwin (R Ashwin and M Ashwin) bowled really nicely. Although the batsmen did attack, they either did not find the gaps and we didn’t find the boundaries, that’s where advantage swung from our favour to Kings XI favour,” he said.
“There were a few errors by the bowlers. We got into the wrong areas. We gave away five boundaries more than what we should have. They were a little bit of freebies rather than making the batsman really work for them.”
Rajasthan Royals have performed under par in the tournament so far. One of the greatest takeaways for them in the tournament will be the emergence of Jofra Archer who has been quite sensational in the tournament so far. Even yesterday he was the wrecker in chief for Rajasthan Royals and bagged three crucial wickets for just 15 runs in his 4 overs spell.
Courtesy his brilliance in the T20 format, Jofra Archer has been called up to the England squad for the ODI series against Pakistan. However, he hasn’t been named in the preliminary World Cup squad which the ECB announced earlier today. Jofra Archer will look to make his opportunities count in the remainder of the IPL which might make a stronger case for him for a place in the World Cup squad.
