Rajasthan Royals have ridden a well-worn storyline this season: they began with momentum, strung together consecutive victories, and seemed to compress matches into a tidy contest during the opening phases. Yet the same vulnerability keeps resurfacing when the game stretches—Royals’ batting in the middle overs, especially their ability to handle spin. While the early explosion from the top has masked that weakness in 2025, recent contests show that high-quality spin units are still finding a way to tilt the balance.
Key takeaways
- Royals had scored at a slow clip in overs 7 to 11, ranking as the second-slowest team during that stretch in IPL 2025.
- When facing spin in the early middle overs, Royals have dropped 20 wickets, with 15 falling to spin, at a scoring rate of 121.89—the lowest among all sides.
- Against Kolkata Knight Riders, the innings pattern swung from 63/0 in the first six to 98/2 by the end of the 11th over, and then to 104/3 after 12.
- Varun Chakravarthy played a major role in that shift, including a stumping after getting the batter wrong-footed on a reverse-sweep attempt.
- Sunil Narine’s spell was similarly impactful, with Royals’ batters struggling to turn variation into runs—together, the duo produced 5 wickets for 40 in eight overs.
- In this matchup, Royals managed only 17 runs from 23 balls against spin, with just one boundary.
Why Royals’ early dominance still hasn’t solved the spin problem
Rajasthan Royals have made front-running a feature of their season, and this campaign has followed the same trajectory. They started with four straight wins, with the contests largely getting decided once the Powerplay overs passed—both with the bat and in the way they defended. That kind of momentum can hide certain flaws, and for Royals, the biggest one sits in their middle-overs batting.
The core issue is their battle against spin in the middle order. It was a defining characteristic of their second-last finish in the 2025 season, but the start of this year pushed it down the order of concerns. With Vaibhav Sooryavanshi and Yashasvi Jaiswal delivering aggressive beginnings, Royals have been able to postpone risk, absorb pressure from the turn, and set themselves up for more favourable pace matchups later in the innings.
Still, the numbers during the early middle phase tell a different story. Between overs 7 and 11 in IPL 2025, Royals have been the second-slowest scoring side. The breakdown against spin is even sharper: 20 wickets lost in that phase, 15 of them to spin, and a scoring rate of just 121.89—again, the poorest mark across the tournament.
Kolkata’s spin strategy keeps exposing the same fault line
Opposition teams have increasingly leaned into spin not only to control but to actively engineer comebacks. That trend was visible in the way Kolkata Knight Riders handled Royals on their road to a league double. In Guwahati, KKR’s spinners triggered a slide that began with Royals on 54/1 in the Powerplay and then moved to 82/5 over the next five overs. The same theme repeated in Kolkata, where the situation shifted from 59/2 to 90/5.
In this latest meeting, the sequence followed a familiar arc. Royals raced to 63/0 in the opening six overs, but by the time the 11th over was completed, the score had moved to 98/2. The momentum didn’t fully stabilise either—after 12 overs, they were on 104/3.
Chakravarthy’s turning point and Narine’s restraint
Varun Chakravarthy was central to the momentum change. He created discomfort from the first moments, first forcing Vaibhav Sooryavanshi into a miscue on a slog-sweep aimed at the turn. He then struck again by slipping a leg break past Dhruv Jurel’s reverse sweep, resulting in a stumping. Chakravarthy also outthought Riyan Parag with changes in pace: three quicker deliveries were followed by a slower googly that breached the gate.
Sunil Narine complemented the pressure with another economical spell. He accounted for Jaiswal using an off-break that he tossed wide outside off, drawing the batter into reaching away from the body and causing a mistake. Against Donovan Ferreira, Narine leaned into his trademark uncertainty—five deliveries of subtle variation that looked harmless, before the decisive carrom ball that ended the contest for the batter.
Together, the spin duo returned figures of 5 wickets for 40 across eight overs, with more than half of their balls landing as dots—26 in total.
Structural concern: Royals’ middle order needs time to settle
The bigger worry isn’t limited to one game. None of Royals’ batters strike spin better than they do pace, and the middle order—particularly—takes time to build rhythm against spin. Looking across their first ten balls against spin in IPL since 2024, four of the middle-order options have strike rates clustered between 84 and 114, with only Riyan Parag sitting above 21 on average.
That pattern played out again in this match. Royals collectively produced just 17 runs from 23 balls against spin, with only one boundary to show for it. The outcome was clear: once early momentum stops, Royals have not yet consistently shown they can recalibrate their batting approach against quality spin.
Openers may thrive in the high-variance style that comes with chasing a ceiling, and Royals can benefit from that volatility when the Powerplay goes their way. But until the middle order becomes more effective against spin, this will remain a clear vulnerability—one that teams like KKR will keep targeting with confidence.
