Rajasthan Royals owner Manoj Badale said that he is very disappointed to lose out on Jofra Archer but the circumstances were such that they couldn’t do much.
Notable that England pacer Jofra Archer was picked by Mumbai Indians at a price of 8 crores despite his nonavailability in the season 2022.
End of an eRRa. ☹️?#RoyalsFamily | @JofraArcher pic.twitter.com/Vv3YSMkG2W
— Rajasthan Royals (@rajasthanroyals) February 14, 2022
Jofra Archer made his IPL debut for Rajasthan Royals in 2018
However, Badale is quite satisfied with how the whole auction panned out for them. He stated that Rajasthan Royals wanted to build a strong Indian core and they got plenty of them in the auction. They got two quality Indian spinners in the form of Yuzvendra Chahal and R Ashwin. They also got a young Indian pace sensation Prasidh Krishna at a price of 10 Crores.
“Our priority this year was to build a strong Indian core, which we have done with the likes of Ashwin, Chahal, Karun, Saini, Devdutt, Prasidh along with Sanju and Yashasvi already retained,” Manoj Badale said in a media release.
Ahead of the auction, they retained three players- Sanju Samson, Jos Buttler, and Yashashvi Jaiswal.
“Our focus was always on having a world-class XI, which is visible in the way we have gone about our business as we tried to utilize the majority of our funds on the starting XI,” Badale said.
He is also satisfied with their overseas picks. They picked West Indies’s middle-order batsman Shimron Hetmyer for 8.5 crores while they got New Zealand left-arm seamer Trent Boult at 8 crores. Interestingly before the last round of the auction, they had only 4 overseas players in the squad. But in the last round, they added another 4 to have some good options.
“We’ve tried our best to also go for familiar faces, who we are excited to have at the Royals again. In terms of the international players, we’ve secured some amazing buys and I’m looking forward to seeing them in pink,” he added.
Since winning the inaugural edition in 2008, Rajasthan Royals hasn’t had a great run of late. In fact, the last time they made it to the playoffs was way back in 2018.
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