Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Rajasthan Royals

Rajasthan Royals is a franchise cricket team that represents the state of Rajasthan in the IPL. The team is led and coached by Shane Warne. There is no Icon Player and brand ambassador for the team and it is also the only IPL team to have a foreign player being both the Coach and Captain. The team's mascot is a lion named Moochu Singh [2]. The team anthem, 'Halla Bol' is sung by Ila Arun[2]. The promotional video that aired on national networks before and during the first edition of the IPL was directed by Indrajit Nattoji of Blink Pictures. Leicestershire spinner Jeremy Snape signed on with the Rajasthan Royals as their high-performance coach and team psychologist. They became the champions of the inaugural IPL tournament.
[edit] Franchise History
The Rajasthan Royals franchise is owned by Emerging Media group and is Chaired by Manoj Badale. Other investors include Lachlan Murdoch, Aditya S Chellaram and Suresh Chellaram. The Group acquired the franchise for $67 million. Incidentally, this was the least expensive franchise in the Indian Premier League and probably the least fancied team in the league at the beginning of the tournament. Bollywood Actress and Celebrity Big Brother winner Shilpa Shetty and her business partner Raj Kundra paid approximately US $15.4 million for a 11.7% stake.

[edit] 2008 IPL Season
Prior to the start of the inaugural IPL season, many considered the Royals as possibly the weakest team in the IPL, giving them little chance of competing well in the tournament.[3] Evidence of the latter opinion seemed to be confirmed when the team lost its first match against the Delhi Daredevils in a 9 wicket loss.[4] However the Royals won their next game by defeating the Kings XI Punjab and continued to win the next five games in a row. The Royals built up an impressive 11-3 record after their fourteen premilinary round matches; this included a consecutive 5-game and 6-game winning streak with an undefeated record on their home ground and a spot at the top of the points table. They were also the first team to book a place in the semifinals with their 65 run win over the Royal Challengers Bangalore. Shane Warne's captaincy and simultaneous coaching was praised and well received by everyone,[5][6] including opposition teams.[7] In addition, many players of the Royals team had consistently played well. The Royals secured a place in the finals with a victory against the Delhi Daredevils.

[edit] Champions of the Tournament
The Rajasthan Royals became the winners of the first IPL tournament, when they defeated the Chennai Super Kings by 3 wickets in the final played on 1 June 2008. With the scores level with one ball remaining, Sohail Tanvir scored the winning run and therefore prevented the match from being decided on a bowl out.[8]
Each player and representative on the team was awarded a medal and the team was presented with the DLF Indian Premier League trophy along with a cheque for US$ 1.2 million prize money. Many of the Royals' players also took home individual awards for their performance during the tournament; Yusuf Pathan claimed the Man of the Match award for the final match, Sohail Tanvir finished the tournament in possession of the Purple Cap (the IPL's leading wicket taker) and Australian all-rounder Shane Watson was declared the Man of the Series.

[edit] Players
Rajasthan Royals were the least active franchise during the players auction. The team didn't have a designated icon player, which saved a lot of cap space for the franchise. However the franchise was surprisingly low key during the auction, and in the end got penalized by the IPL committee for failing to meet the minimum bidding criteria of $3.3 million.[9] The highest bid by Rajasthan Royals was for the Indian middle order batsman Mohammad Kaif, who came off the board at $675,000. Shane Warne was named the coach and the captain of the side. The Royals were unique during the 2008 season as they were the only side to have an English cricketer in their squad, Hampshire's all rounder Dimitri Mascarenhas who only played one match, against the Delhi Daredevils in Jaipur on 11 May, before returning back to England. The Rajasthan Royals also selected Justin Langer and Morne Morkel in the player auction, but both declined to instead play county cricket.[10] [11] In 2009 Season the team has cut down seven Indian players from the previous years squad. They are batsman Mohammad Kaif and other relatively unknowns Dinesh Salunkhe, Paras Dogra, Anup Revandkar, Srideep Mangela, Ashraf Makda and Azhar Malik.[12]

[edit] Current squad
Rajasthan Royals Roster
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Batsmen
15 Graeme Smith
22 Robert Quiney
28 Yusuf Pathan
12 Ravindra Jadeja
29 Swapnil Asnodkar
18 Niraj Patel
-- Raiphi Gomez
02 Abhishek Raut
Wicket Keepers
38 NV Ojha
05 Mahesh Rawat
All Rounders
33 Shane Watson
35 Tyron Henderson
77 Lee Carseldine
32 Dimitri Mascarenhas
Bowlers
23 Shane Warne(Captain)
-- Shane Harwood
-- Shaun Tait
15 Morne Morkel
03 Munaf Patel
37 Siddharth Trivedi
20 Kamran Khan
86 Sumeet Khatri
13 Amit Singh
Support Staff
Assistant Head Coach: Harish Joshi
High Performance Coach: Jeremy Snape
Physiotherapist: John Gloster
Performance Analyst: Mohsin Sheikh
Director Of Coaching: Darren Berry

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