So near, yet so far - the story of Rajasthan Royals' season

There is a feeling that Rajasthan Royals (RR) have been terrible chasers in IPL 2025, until the very last game of their season, they were able to run down a target only once in eight attempts. And that needed a 14 year old to perform a miracle.

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2022 and fell just one step short of that in 2024 isn't in the business of making mistakes. Least of all the same one over and over. Over this three-year period, RR had a win-loss ratio of 1.63 as a chasing unit, the second-best of all the teams in the IPL.

They could have improved on that this year. Three of those seven defeats were looking a lot like wins. Two of them saw inspired performances from their young Indian batting core that had totals in excess of 200 well within their grasp. One run. Two runs. Ten. Eleven. A Super Over. So slim were the margins. Most royals are defined by excess. These guys were left forever reaching for parity.Reverse swing played a big part in their undoing. No other team suffered as badly as RR did to the old ball's whims.

Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazelwood, Avesh Khan. Andre Russell These were the impediments they ran into and couldn't overcome. When those bowlers were able to execute their plans to as close to perfection as possible, all RR's batters could do was hold on. Shimron Hetmyer found himself in the thick of this unforgiving cycle. He finished with a strike rate of 158.53, the seventh-lowest among 46 batters who were a frequent presence in the death overs (minimum 30 runs scored). RR set aside INR 11 crore to retain him. He had earned that payday. Between 2022 and 2024, his strike rate in the death overs was 200.