IPL retention day has been done and dusted. A total of 163 players have been retained, most being by the Delhi Capitals (20), while SRH doing the lowest (12). Ahead of the official announcement, social media was abuzz with several rumours about a few big players not being retained by their respective franchise. While many proved to be true, some didn’t and the two biggest claims that were untrue belonged to Rajasthan Royals (RR).
Several reports claimed that Rajasthan Royals were letting go of young Karnataka batter Devdutt Padikkal and veteran off-spinner Ravichandran Ashwin. While a couple of them later suggested that the franchise had cracked the deal with Padikkal, but Ashwin was going to be released by the last year’s finalists. However, all of them had to chew their words back as Ashwin was one of the 16 retentions for the Royals.
Taking a dig at all those reports, Rajasthan Royals, one of the wittiest social media handles of an IPL franchise, shared a picture of Ashwin during his celebration of Andre Russell’s wicket during the thrilling RR vs KKR match last year while captioned it saying, “Did you really think?”
Ashwin was one of the most important cog in RR’s wheels not just with the ball but with the bat as well. Ashwin was used as a floater by the Royals as he batted at different positions at No.3, No.5 and No. 7 and with the ball, he amde an excellent spin-bowling duo with leg-spinner Yuzvendra Chahal, who was the Purple Cap winner of the tournament with 27 scalps to his name.
Players retained by Rajasthan Royals: Sanju Samson (w/c), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Shimron Hetmyer, Devdutt Padikkal, Jos Buttler, Dhruv Jurel, Riyan Parag, Prasidh Krishna, Trent Boult, Obed McCoy, Navdeep Saini, Kuldeep Sen, Kuldip Yadav, R Ashwin, Yuzvendra Chahal, KC Cariappa
Players released by Rajasthan Royals: Anunay Singh, Corbin Bosch, Daryl Mitchell, James Neesham, Karun Nair, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Rassie van der Dussen, Shubham Garhwal, Tejas Baroka
