Riyan Parag named Rajasthan Royals' new captain

Riyan Parag has been named* the next Rajasthan Royals (RR) captain ahead of IPL 2026. Parag's promotion comes after the departure of Sanju Samson to Chennai Super Kings (CSK), a trade that came in exchange for two allrounders, Ravindra Jadeja and Sam Curran.

Parag, 24, has led RR before. He did it last year, when Samson missed eight games with injuries and Parag stepped in. Out of those eight matches, RR won only two. Parag averaged a healthy 38.57 in those matches, ending that stint with a career-best 95 against Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) at Eden Gardens.

ESPNcricinfo has learnt Parag was among a few players with whom head coach Kumar Sangakkara had interviews with, before finalising him as the captain. This means RR will have a new captain and a new head coach after Rahul Dravid parted ways with the franchise after the 2025 season, when they finished second from bottom with just four wins from 14 games.

"The night before the [T20 World Cup] warm-up game, I played against USA I got a call from Manoj [Badale] and Sanga [Sangakkara] that said, 'congratulations you are the captain.' A lot of emotions and then straight to the matter, like next season, what do we need to change or do better so that we finish in a better place," Parag said in a video uploaded on RR's social handles.

"The question that came to me was how do you get 25 different individuals on the same page. The nature of the IPL is that not everyone plays and if someone doesn't play, it is natural for someone to drift away mid-season or the latter half of the season. That stuck with me and I started [thinking] immediately like how do I get 25 people on the same page this year."

There were other captaincy candidates in the RR setup, such as Yashasvi Jaiswal and Dhruv Jurel, and Parag expects them to back him in the upcoming season. "The first thing Jaiswal said was, 'congrats brother, let's win it this time'. That's all I want from Jaiswal and Dhruv. Dhruv is on the calmer side, so he would not express it as much."

Since making his IPL debut in 2019, Parag has played all seven seasons for RR. He got to play all their games in the last two seasons. The 2024 edition was his best in terms of his run tally - of 573 - which he scored at an average of 52.09, while striking at 149.21. Overall, he has played 84 matches for RR for 1566 runs and seven wickets.

"He's been at RR for a long time and understands our approach and philosophy," RR owner Badale said. "He's always been an incredibly ambitious young man. He's going to be in and around the Indian T20 team for a long time so he is learning from the very, very best.

"For someone so young, he has incredible self-awareness. He has had very tough times at the IPL. He came in as a very young player and there was a lot expected of him. And he'd be the first to say that he has had a couple of very average seasons and fans fell out of love with him for a period of time. He's also of an age where he has grown up living with social media every single day and that's taken its toll on him.

"The one thing I have absolute 100% conviction of is that we ran the best possible process. Whether we made the nest possible pick, only time will tell."