Rajasthan Royals captain Sanju Samson said that he hopes his team will play fearlessly and end the 13-year-long title drought in the Indian Premier League (IPL) as they won the inaugural edition of the Indian Premier League in 2008. This time they have Jos Buttler, Devdutt Padikkal, Ravichandran Ashwin, Trent Boult and Yuzvendra Chahal, besides Samson himself, as well.
“Our main focus is to get together as soon as possible. We have a different squad this time, some new members in the team, so it is important to come together and understand your teammates,” Sanju Samson said on Monday during a virtual press conference ahead of RR’s IPL 2022 opener against Sunrisers Hyderabad on Tuesday. “We definitely had a lot of learning from the last 2-3 seasons. We discussed and worked on a few options and we got a really very good team in the auction.”
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“We have a lot of Indian and international strength in our team. It’s a very long tournament. We need to understand the mindset and the fitness and form of all players. But we have enough options to play around,” he again said. “I think this format has to be played with lot of fearless mindset and that sort of characters are there in this team this year. So we would just like to go out there and express ourselves.”
Meanwhile, veteran pace bowler Lasith Malinga has joined them as the team’s bowling coach and Sanju Samson said that he is adding a lot of value to the team and making his job quite easier too.
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“It’s great that people like Lasith and Kumar Sangakkara (Director of Cricket) whom we have grown up watching and whom almost every cricketer admire for whatever they had done on the field. They are now just trying to help youngsters like us to understand their game better. Whatever chats we had with Lasith, he makes bowling look very simple and easy and that it gives a lot of clarity for every bowler in the side. He definitely is making a lot of things easier for me as a captain,” Sanju Samson concluded.
