Royals at sixes and sevens as they search for the right combination

One week into IPL 2025, bowlers are lamenting the lack of contest between the bat and the ball. Kagiso Rabada has suggested renaming the sport "batting", while Shardul Thakur wants 250 vs 250 pitches to be penalised. But when a surface offered a hint of spice, like the one in Guwahati on Wednesday, Rajasthan Royals (RR) were not capable of making the most of it, and it had to do with personnel and tactics.

Teams usually field seven batters when setting a target and bring in a bowler as an Impact Player when defending.

On Wednesday, RR relied on six batters to set the target, a tactic that worked in three of their five games in IPL 2024, when they made the playoffs. But Sanju Samson's finger injury restricts a few aspects of his batting, Yashasvi Jaiswal is struggling for fluency, and Riyan Parag is adjusting to a new role at No. 3. And RR were left in a pickle midway through their innings.

To lengthen their batting, RR promoted Wanindu Hasaranga to No. 5 against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), ahead of Dhruv Jurel, who only three nights ago had played a blinder to spark life into a daunting chase against SRH. That afternoon, his 35-ball 70 powered RR past a top-order collapse. Here, the Hasaranga experiment was quickly ended by Varun Chakravarthy.

This allowed KKR to get in a few inexpensive overs out of Moeen Ali, who wouldn't have played had Sunil Narine not been ill. But Moeen did much more. When Nitish Rana's attempts to reverse-sweep or get down the pitch failed, he tried to open up the off side but was out to Moeen's classical offbreak that gripped and spun. The logic was that if he could attack Moeen or Varun and regain some momentum, KKR could be put under pressure. That didn't happen and RR were five down after 11 overs.

At this point, RR summoned their Impact Player - not a bowler, but a proper batter in Shubham Dubey - to arrest the collapse. The move meant Shimron Hetmyer, an explosive batter who RR had retained for INR 11 crore, would come in at No. 8 - as an unfathomable a move as could be.

"I don't get it," Nick Knight, the former England opener, said on ESPNcricinfo's TimeOut. "If you've signed Shimron Hetmyer, you know what you're going to get from him. He's a world-class international, top-quality batter. You've signed him to change the game. You've signed him to turn a game. You've signed him to make a difference.

"How much of a difference is he going to make if he is pushed down the order when you get in Hasaranga, who is in it to bowl legspin? I get that if you want to change the tempo of an innings, you might fly one up and say, 'have a go', but I don't see why you might want to put Hetmyer back down further."

Sairaj Bahutule, RR's spin-bowling coach, saw it differently, though. "He's a good player of spin," Bahutule said of Dubey. "Being an Impact Player, it was important we utilised his batting skills. [The thinking was that] if he could accelerate at that particular time knowing the fast bowlers will come later on, Hetmyer could've been a good match-up at that particular moment."

In IPL 2025, teams have posted 200-plus totals regularly despite losing wickets in bunches, highlighting the value of batting depth. Delhi Capitals (DC) exhibited this quite sensationally in their opening game when they had as many as seven batters and an eighth, in the form of Impact Player Ashutosh Sharma, who made a game-changing 31-ball 66 not out to clinch victory from what looked like certain defeat. On Tuesday, Punjab Kings (PBKS) had batting till No. 9; it's a different matter they didn't need it even with the high-risk approach that helped them set Gujarat Titans (GT) a target of 244.

RR lack that batting depth without the Impact Player - or even with him - and that prevents risk-free cricket from the premier batters.

"It's quite confusing as well, because if you are batsman and have this batting unit, how hard do you go," Ambati Rayudu, Knight's co-panelist, said. "When you know you have eight batsmen, you tend to go that much harder. When the Impact Player [rule] had just started, we all [at CSK] thought, 'Okay, we will go [hard] from ball one because we have enough batting - let's use the whole depth of it'. That's where [RR] might struggle to keep that intent going."

But Bahutule remained confident. "We're a young side with a young captain. It's a question of us getting into performance-mode, which I feel will come through."

For now, it's back to the drawing board, and the search for that elusive depth.