Only knows how to talk: Michael Vaughan slams Rajasthan Royals owner

Rajasthan Royals (RR) suffered a humiliating defeat by a margin of 86 runs on Thursday, in an Indian Premier League (IPL) 2021 encounter against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). The Rajasthan-based franchise had already been knocked out of the race for the playoffs, following a defeat against defending champions Mumbai Indians (MI). This was certainly not what fans expected from a team comprising of top performers like Sanju Samson, Shivam Dube, Rahul Tewatia. RR’s sorry state drew criticism from former England captain Michael Vaughan, who slammed the franchise owner for their inability to lead the team on to success.

Interestingly, Manoj Badale who is the owner of the Rajasthan-based franchise and English journalist Simon Hughes recently co-authored a book named ‘A New Innings’. The novel explained how the IPL works, going on to share tips over efficiently managing a sports team.

“Rajasthan always makes me laugh. They are the one team that’s talk about ‘Moneyball’ more than anyone. They have written a book! I mean I know a lot about them because they have written a book with Simon Hughes… you know, how the IPL works and running a franchise, it’s a great read but you kind of look at the book and think ‘This is a great read but you haven’t won since the first year but how are you telling everyone how to do it?” said Vaughan in a Cricbuzz video.

“If it’s so easy and so obvious how to run it and produce ‘Moneyball’, pick players and use data and stats, surely you should be more competitive! Surely you should win more games of cricket (chuckles). They’re brilliant at talking but not very good at playing the game,” he added.

Sanju Samson expresses pride despite defeat against KKR

RR skipper Sanju Samson hailed his teammates for showing character throughout the 2021 edition of the cash-rich league. Samson was full of praise with regard to the positivity maintained through thick and thin.

“I think to be very honest it was a better wicket. It was staying a little low with the new ball but it was a better wicket. 171 was chaseable on this wicket. I think we wanted to get a good start. We needed a powerful powerplay. We wanted to execute whatever we planned but we didn’t execute. I think if you look at the whole season, we have gone through many challenges. We showed character though and am proud of the boys,” stated the RR skipper.

“We won some close games and lost some easy ones. We need to play a better standard of cricket to win more games in this tournament. Everyone came up with positive vibes, People were ready to go out there and win games for us. Being the skipper, I changed the way I look at my innings. It was always about thinking about the match situations. I would have loved to win more games despite scoring a lot of runs,” he concluded.

It will be interesting to see if RR look to make amends in the upcoming IPL mega-auction.