IPL 2024: Rajasthan looks to get back on winning tracks

Rajasthan Royals’s Kuldeep Sen (third from right) celebrates the wicket of Abhinav Manohar (extreme right) of Gujarat Titans with teammates at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium in Jaipur on Wednesday. Pic/AFP

A disappointed Rajasthan Royals will have to focus on better execution of their strategies for a swift turnaround when they face a highly inconsistent yet capable Punjab Kings in their Indian Premier League match here on Saturday.

The Royals had an excellent chance to register their fifth win on the trot and consolidate their totem pole position, but Rashid Khan's daring assault helped Gujarat Titans snatch a last-ball victory on Wednesday.

It might have come as a rude shock for the Royals at Fort Jaipur, and as such, they would want to treat it as an aberration and dish out a more refined outing against the Punjab side. But it also highlighted some muddled thinking.

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The Sanju Samson-led Rajasthan outfit lost to the Titans because of the below-par effort from Kuldip Sen (19th over) and Avesh Khan (20th over) at a vital passage, when they conceded 35 runs across 12 balls.

Here, the Royals made a slight tactical error by not letting Trent Boult complete his quota in that match as the veteran left-arm pacer ended the match at 2-0-8-0. There is no gainsaying that Boult could have made a change in the script, but Samson leaving that option unused was a tad perplexing.

So, the Royals will be looking for an improvement in the strategising and execution part against the Kings. The Shikhar Dhawan-captained side has blown hot and cold so far in the tournament, winning two and losing three out of five matches.

The primary reason for their middling run this year is the patchy form of their fancied batsmen as Punjab relied on cameos by uncapped Shashank Singh and Ashutosh Sharma to boost their batting.