Follow UsRajasthan Royals find themselves in a precarious situation, with qualification for the IPL 2025 playoffs seemingly far away. The inaugural IPL champions have won just two games out of their first eight encounters and are in eighth position. Another loss from this position will knock the Royals out of the tournament.
Ahead of their clash against Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), their head coach Rahul Dravid revealed that the franchise can’t afford to make many mistakes.
"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,” Dravid said ahead of the clash.
So, what will RR’s strategy be this time around against RCB?
"Do we have an RCB player from last time? Play him in the XI straightaway!" Dravid said with a laugh.
"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 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."
Across six innings, the average first-innings score was 142, the lowest first-innings total at M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in the IPL this year. Dravid, who has played all his life at the venue, insisted that the team needs to adapt themselves irrespective of the conditions.
"I mean, you just have to go for it irrespective and that's a given," Dravid said when asked about how to approach batting on such surfaces. "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.
However, at the same time, the 52-year-old insisted that the conditions ahead of their RCB clash would be ‘high-scoring’.
"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.”