Royals boss Badale: Samson was 'drained of emotional capital'

Definitely. What was on my mind when the 2025 season finished was that we needed to very quickly do what we do at the end of every year, which is [to conduct] a thorough, independent review of why we performed so badly. To be clear, we do these reviews when we perform well [too]. So there was nothing unusual about the process at the end of 2025 other than the reality that we were reviewing a very poor season. In fact, our poorest season in 18 years. What I had on my list was: understanding why and what were the recommendations and changes that we could make to put us in a better position for 2026.

We always try where we can to have some independence in the review. So, for example, we had a tough year in Dubai [IPL 2020, where RR finished last with six wins] and Andrew Strauss led the review and then subsequently joined the RR Board; Strauss sat across the reviews for many years subsequently and he would bring that impartiality, if you like. This year we didn't have Strauss because by mutual agreement he stepped away to focus on his other business interests.

So the review this time was led by Stuart Lancaster [former England men's rugby coach], which to some of the readers may seem a strange choice given that he's a rugby coach, but he's actually passionate and highly interested in cricket as well. And someone that I'd got to know through my work on the FA technical advisory board and someone who has been through his own ups and downs as a head coach. So we had him lead the review, supported by my business partner Charles Mindenhall, who again brings 18 years of Board context, but again, a real independence in terms of his own opinions.

All the key members of the support staff and most of the key players [were spoken to in the review].

Of course. In fact, there were multiple meetings with Dravid and Sangakkara.

There were basically three themes. One was that the structure was too complex. Two, that we needed a simpler, more aligned structure. And thirdly, that in the IPL, player connectivity is critical. The core issue was we had allowed it to get too complex. And, actually, the person who has to own [up to] that is me.

We needed a simpler, more aligned structure. The review suggested there were areas we could improve in our decision-making.

Actually, that wasn't when the decision was taken [to appoint Dravid]. The conversations had been ongoing for multiple years. He is, and will always be, one of the greatest Indian coaches that's ever lived. And if you remember, his coaching career started at RR. He's a good personal friend. He's been an informal kind of mentor and advisor even when he is not been with RR. So I'd always had an aspiration for him to return, but he was also clear that he wasn't going to be available until he delivered a trophy for India, which he did [T20 World Cup 2024].

The conversations were actually about him taking on a broader role in the franchise, not about him leaving. Actually, my ambition was for him to take a much bigger role in the franchise, but his ambition was to continue being a head coach. It was that divergence that led him to decide to move on.

Look, there is no question that with the benefit of hindsight some auction calls did not work as we had hoped, but that's almost always going to be the conclusion when you've had a bad season. That's not the reason we parted company. It would be a sign of naive management if you connected dots like that so explicitly. And the reality of any sports franchise is you have multiple people contribute to big decisions like that. But ultimately, I have to own the decisions. I can't pass them on to other people just because they prove to be right or wrong.

What you are perhaps suggesting is that because we got that [retention picks] wrong, this event seven months later happened. But I don't think it's as simple as that kind of cause and effect. We shouldn't also forget we had a bad season [IPL 2025] but we lost four games where we had about 95% win prediction going into the last over. The ESPNcricinfo predictor had us at 98% in three of those four games going into that last over - you win those four games, everyone's looking at the season differently. I like to think, though, that we would have done exactly the same review and we would have made exactly the same conclusions. The bit I am unequivocal about is: we absolutely would have done the review.

Look, he sort of made indications towards the end of the [IPL 2025] season that he was emotionally [drained]. A friend of mine always says to me, you've got three types of capital in your life: you have physical capital, you have intellectual capital, and you have emotional capital. And the way I describe what Sanju said to me - he didn't necessarily use these words - is he was drained of the emotional capital that he had put into RR.

Now, when you run an IPL franchise, players ask to leave, stay, get retained, put in the auction all the time because ultimately their primary lookout, as it should be, is themselves. And whether it's their earnings or whether it's their prospects of making the Indian team, that's true. In the case of Sanju, that was never been the case.

So when he says, 'Sir, I want to move on, I'm emotionally drained; I almost care too much and I feel like I need a fresh chapter', when he asks that, you have to listen. I was really clear with him that we would cooperate and try to seek an alternative chapter for him, but we would only do it if it was a player trade and we would only do it if our view was that the trade made the franchise stronger. And to be fair to him, he respected that. He agreed with that and he abided by that.

Actually, I didn't. Of course, your heart tells you to get on a plane and fly to India and try and convince him, but I didn't. No, nor did Sanga. Nor did Rahul. The man Sanju Samson is so authentic, we just respected his desire. But we were clear with him that we would only satisfy that desire if it made the franchise as strong or stronger.

We would retain him. The other two conditions of the process were: one, I would personally lead the process so that we had no leaks. It's a sensitive thing doing trades, because owners have to declare which players may be available in the knowledge that they may then be playing for them next year. You are also dealing with human beings. You are not dealing with robots. The second condition for the process was I would personally contact every franchise so that no franchise could ever say, 'oh, he did a deal with him because he's a friend of his'. So I did call every single franchise quite quickly.

It was clear there were sort of five teams, very, very interested. As for why CSK, we went through a five to six week process of negotiation, analysis, review, as well as discussions with Sanju. And that's how we got to the answer we did.

Hundred per cent. We spoke lots and lots.

The media narrative fascinated me because the media narrative was this is a franchise in chaos. Rahul leaves, there's management changes, Sanju's asking to leave. There were three or four big figures that left the franchise in quick succession. Actually, that could not be further from how it felt internally. The season finished in June, my message to everyone was, 'listen, decompress for the end of June'. We started the review, I think, on July 1, and we finished the review exactly when we wanted to, I think at the end of the first week of August, because Stuart was starting a new coaching job and people were going to start disappearing on a holiday. I said I wanted till August to digest the review. I had multiple conversations with Sanga and with Rahul and with Sanju through that period. And September and October have been the implementation months.

Personally, any owner would be mad not to be tempted by Jadeja. I don't need to talk about his cricket credentials: he's won trophies in the IPL, he's won trophies on the international stage. He's arguably one of our best batters, one of our best bowlers, one of our best fielders.

Even though he played for us [in 2008-09], I didn't really know him as a person. And also the person I knew was a 19-year-old. I mean, obviously there's a nice narrative about returning home and coming back to where he started, but in truth, that's been a bigger theme for him. He called me when CSK informed him that he was up for trade. He was so happy to be coming back to RR. Actually, that made me smile and laugh. But it wasn't just about Jadeja - it was about Jadeja and [Sam] Curran.

Curran is a key part of this trade because it's the combination of the two that fill three or four slots that you and your colleagues identified were big weaknesses. And it's stating the obvious, but when you get players that can bat and bowl, it just allows you to change the balance. I think we spent 68 of our 90 crore last year on batting. And that inevitably kind of drives an imbalance. The exciting part from our perspective is arguably one of India's greatest superstars and one of England's all-round superstars added to the team.

Not really. And it's not part of the conversation right now. We actually have got the player leadership group together twice, once including him, to make it clear that we are going to go through a process over the next couple of months. We've got probably six or seven players that could be RR captain. We didn't want to get into that and embark on that part of the process until we knew the trade was happening. Otherwise, it becomes a futile process. Now that the trade is done, our absolute short-term focus is the auction. Once the auction is done, our next focus then will be the captaincy process.

I do. The thing that makes the IPL the tournament that it is, and I personally think it's the essence of sport, is unpredictable outcomes. So we can go from, in my humble opinion, certainly being one of the best two teams in the last three-year cycle to being one of the worst two teams last year. Now, while that's frustrating and leads to conversations like this and hours of work, protecting the unpredictability of the outcomes should be the central objective of any of the governors of the IPL.

The only way you do that is with really robust salary caps - otherwise it becomes a tournament for the richest owners - and a very transparent procurement process. And whether it's the NFL Draft or the IPL auction, I can't think of a more transparent approach. Clearly, the teams with the deepest pockets will always push for more retentions, they will push for abandonment of the auctions, but then you end up with the challenge that you have had in other sporting leagues like soccer, where it's a league of ten teams on paper, but it's four teams that are really competing for the final. I don't think that's good for the fan. We sometimes forget these tournaments exist for the fans and they are the people that pay for it with their eyeballs. And fans want to watch games where they don't know who's going to win, even if their team is playing.

It's part of the strategy. As long as you know the rules and as long as the rules don't keep changing at the last minute, it's part of the fun of plotting, which is thinking two years ahead to the players that you are going to retain, thinking one year ahead to what does this mean for that mega auction.

The conversations with him were not about any sort of rebuilding or radical transformation, but how do we sort of return to the things that made us successful from 2022 to 2024. We were the worst fielding side in the IPL last year. We have always believed that culture is incredibly important. So how do we double down on some of those weaknesses and some of those historic strengths? And it was a reasonably quick conclusion that that sort of stability and evolution rather than revolution would be best managed this year if he took the helm.

The media has been always very kind describing us as India's most important talent factory. And, of course, the stats bear that out pretty unambiguously. But I've always had a wry smile when I read those things because we've never had any other objective - certainly for the past four years - of doing anything other than winning the IPL. We are not only here to develop young talent. We are here to compete and win.

Again, I come back to the unpredictability of the IPL. As stakeholders, as shareholders, as owners, it's too tough a competition to set goals in terms of outcomes. It's naive to say we must win the IPL this year because the margins between the teams are so thin and a couple of tosses here or there, a couple of umpiring decisions here or there can take that away from you. So we don't define our goals in terms of outcomes, we define our goals in terms of inputs. The things that you can control, like squad selection, like behaviours, like culture, like leadership, structure, those are the things you have to focus on, not the outcomes.

Our home is, has been, and will always be Rajasthan. Whether it's this season, next season, the season after, we are the Rajasthan Royals. Our heart is in Rajasthan. The only reason we will ever not play in Rajasthan is because of stadium security, stadium infrastructure, fan protection, fan safety. If we cannot guarantee those things, then we'll play wherever we need to. That's what makes the decisions. It's not about the location. It's about making sure we can play in high-quality stadiums, making sure we can ensure great fan experiences. And that's going to be a challenge this year as it has been for the last 15 years.

This has been the toughest pretty much since RR started. This has been a really tough period. All you can ever be confident of is: have you made the decisions with the best available information? You can't be confident of outcomes in sports. There are too many variables that you can't control. Injuries, weather, tournament location, pitch location. So after doing this for 18 years, again, it's naive to say I'm confident that these will be proven to be the right decisions. You cannot be. What you can be is be true to yourself is that you have made decisions with care, courage and based on the right information. And I sort of sleep easy with that. I don't sleep easy with the loss of two people - Rahul and Sanju - who've been personal friends for 15 years. And I still get emotional thinking about the fact that they won't be there in 2026; in the same way, by the way, I felt very emotional last year about not having Jos Buttler in then squad, but you've got to keep looking forward.

It's a surefire way of going mad if you spend your life revisiting decisions that perhaps weren't the right ones. I mean, it's like you have got to keep looking forward. I'm hugely excited about this squad. I hope our fans are excited and I hope they just appreciate the amount of work, care and thought that goes into these decisions. And now I think on paper we've got a team that can absolutely compete.