Rajasthan Royals have been going through a tough phase. They have hardly managed to show their full potential so far. Meanwhile, Mohammed Siraj, KL Rahul, Yuzvendra Chahal – all ex-RCB players have returned to Bengaluru in IPL 2025 and played a key role in beating their former team as well. And, now everyone is expected to see how Rahul Dravid, the first RCB captain, who is now guiding RR from the dugout, performs after returning home as well.
“Do we have an RCB player from last time? Play him in the XI straightaway!” RR’s head coach Rahul Dravid said with a laugh on Wednesday. Notably, Wanindu Hasaranga and Shimron Hetmyer were once part of RCB. Hasaranga was their leading wicket-taker during their run to the playoffs in 2022 as well.
“No, not at all, man. I don’t think about it like that, to be very honest. Just trying to play a good game of cricket,” Dravid again said. “We know we have to play well to be still alive in this tournament. I know we’ve lost a couple of close games coming into this, but we’ve played some good cricket as well. It’s one of those tournaments where a few balls going here or there and we might have been in a slightly different position, but you need to play well in those critical moments.”
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In the two close games that RR lost, RR required just nine runs to win in the final over with a lot of wickets in hand against both Delhi Capitals and Lucknow super Giants. But, they lost the first via a Super Over and the second by two runs as well. The pitches at the Chinnaswamy Stadium have also proved challenging for batters so far as well. RCB have made first-innings scores 169 for 8, 163 for 7, and 95 for 9 in a 14-over game, and they also lost all three home games so far as well.
“I mean, you just have to go for it irrespective and that’s a given,” Dravid said. “But I think every surface will be different. I think the last one, just having a chat with the groundsman, it was under covers for a really long period of time, so it was probably not a good one to judge it on. The wicket I’m seeing here, from at least what I can make of it, looks a really good wicket, so I can’t really say how those wickets looked in earlier games. But the track that’s been produced for this one looks actually to be a very good cricket wicket and I think it should be a pretty high-scoring game.”
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“Like I said earlier, it’s a very important game for us. Every game from here on, the position we find ourselves in, we can’t afford to make many mistakes. We’ve got to start climbing that table quickly and we’ve got to start winning games quickly, there’s no options, no chances of slipping up anymore,” he further added.
Rahul Dravid was also asked his opinion on the trend of teams struggling to win at home ground in IPL 2025. Only Gujarat Titans, Delhi Capitals and Mumbai Indians have won more than they have lost at home so far in IPL 2025 as well.
“I’m not really sure what specific franchises might have wanted from their curators or from their pitches,” Dravid said. “But yeah, I think home advantage, generally, the teams are new as well, right? It’s the first year of a big auction cycle, so for a lot of the players, even though they may be your home players, they are playing for those teams or those grounds for the first time.”
“For example, at RCB, someone like a Phil Salt was at KKR and he’s coming here for the first time. Someone like Nitish Rana who was not with us and he’s playing for us this year, so for him, Jaipur is actually kind of a new ground in some ways. So maybe sometimes, I think that when you just have a big auction and there’s a change of squad and a change of team, the home advantage may not be that significant. But maybe as you go later on into the cycle, maybe you might start seeing their significance a little bit more because then your players get to practice and play a little bit more on that compared to the opposition team,” Rahul Dravid concluded.
