Released players: Steve Smith, Ankit Rajpoot, Oshane Thomas, Akash Singh, Varun Aaron, Tom Curran, Anirudha Joshi, Shashank Singh.
Retained Players: Wriddhiman Saha, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Khaleel Ahmed, Sandeep Sharma, Abdul Samad, Shreevats Goswami, Abhishek Sharma, Basil Thampi, Virat Singh, T Natarajan, Shahbaz Nadeem, Manish Pandey, Vijay Shankar, Siddharth Kaul, Priyam Garg, David Warner (c), Kane Williamson, Mitchell Marsh, Mohammad Nabi, Rashid Khan, Jonny Bairstow.
Remaining purse: 34.84 cr
Rajasthan Royals (RR) again failed to live up to their expectations in the last season as they finished on the bottom. Led by the Australian Steve Smith, Royals failed to find any sort of momentum last season. This compelled the Rajasthan Royals management to take a-few bold decisions ahead of the 2021 season. The first and most noticeable one was releasing Steve Smith.
Sanju Samson, the very talented young Indian batsman will lead the side in the 2021 season. In another big announcement, Kumar Sangakkara has been roped in as the director of Cricket for Rajasthan Royals.
They have the third-highest purse with Rs 34.85 crore after releasing 8 players. Some of the players whom they can target in the auction are:
Mitchel Marsh
Rajasthan Royals are having a solid batting line up consisting of Star players like Jos Butler, Ben Stokes and Sanju Samson. However, after they traded Uthappa to CSK and released Steve Smith, RR will look forward to find some valuable replacements.
Mitchell Marsh, who is currently a part of the SRH squad would be a good choice for the team, knowing the fact that the Australian solves their middle-order problem. It is almost certain that Ben Stokes and Jos Butler will be opening the innings for RR, as they did in the last season with the captain Sanju Samson coming in at number three. Marsh is come at number 4 would make their batting line-up look more resolute and complete.
Josh Hazelwood
Josh Hazelwood, the tall Australian fast bowler who is a part of the current CSK squad, is a player Rajasthan can look forward in the trading window.
RR have limited fast -bowling options with the likes of Jaydev Unadkat and Jofra Archer being the most important ones. Moreover, during the pre-auction process, the franchise released Oshane Thomas, Tom Curran, Varun Aaron which shows that they are very much keen of revamping their pace department.
Dawid Malan
Dawid Malan, the current world’s leading T20I batsman can be a great replacement for Steve Smith. Ben Stokes had opened the innings in the last few games of the last season, while Jos Butler dropped to number five.
As it looks probable, Ben Stokes is expected to open the innings, while the captain Samson will come in at his regular position at number three. Dawid Malan can be an ideal player for Rajasthan Royals at number 4.