RR team preview: Sanju Samson's form, overseas players' fitness key to team's IPL season

Since winning the inaugural edition of the IPL as one of the most unfavoured teams all the way back in 2008, the Rajasthan Royals have been one of the most consistently underperforming sides at the tournament. Having finished in the bottom half of the table all but three times, the Royals have gained an unwanted reputation as one of the weaker IPL teams - a label they will look to overturn as they come into the IPL 2021 with a brand new Director of Cricket Kumar Sangakkara and first-time skipper, Sanju Samson. Here is our preview of the RR team for 2021.

Rajasthan Royals players to start training for IPL 2021

Despite some brilliant individual performances from youngsters like Rahul Tewatia, Mahipal Lomror, Shreyas Gopal, Sanju Samson, Riyan Parag and Kartik Tyagi in the last season, the Rajasthan Royals failed to pull it together as a team and finished in last place on the table. Having released captain Steve Smith before the 2021 season and missing experienced domestic players, the Royals will be heavily dependent upon their international players this season. 

In focus for them, will be the English quartet of Jos Buttler, Ben Stokes, Jofra Archer and Liam Livingstone - who have all shown great spurts of form over the last year. The team will hope to profit from the fact that all four of these players have played in India as recently as last month and should be well adapted to the conditions here. Of these four players, RR will be missing Jofra Archer - 2020's MVP - for at least their first four games due to a finger injury he sustained during England's tour of India.

IPL teams: Rajasthan Royals players list for IPL 2021 season

Going into the IPL 2021 auction, the Rajasthan Royals had a decent purse of ₹37.85 crore and a total of nine slots to fill in their squad. Concentrating on creating a stronger middle-order - something that had been a problem area for the side in 2020 - the Royals made IPL history, buying South African speedster Chris Morris for a whopping ₹16.25 crore. This makes Morris the most expensive player to have ever been brought at the IPL auction.

Here is the complete RR team for 2021: Sanju Samson (c & wk), Jos Buttler (wk), Ben Stokes, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Manan Vohra, Anuj Rawat, Riyan Parag, David Miller, Rahul Tewatia, Mahipal Lomror, Shreyas Gopal, Mayank Markande, Jofra Archer, Andrew Tye, Jaydev Unadkat, Kartik Tyagi, Shivam Dube, Chris Morris, Mustafizur Rahman, Chetan Sakariya, KC Cariappa, Liam Livingstone, Kuldip Yadav, Akash Singh

RR IPL 2021 schedule

As per the RR IPL 2021 schedule, the Sanju Samson-led side will take on KL Rahul and his PBKS team in their opening match of the IPL 2021 on April 12 at the Wankhede in Mumbai. The game is scheduled to begin at 7:30 PM IST. Here is the rest of the side's schedule for the season:

Image credits: Rajasthan Royals Twitter