Rajasthan Royals

Rajasthan Royals is the franchise that represents the state of Rajasthan in the Indian Premier League. The team is led and coached by Shane Warne. There is no Icon Player for the team. It is the only IPL team to have a foreign captain and playing coach. The team's mascot is a lion named Moochu Singh. The team anthem, 'Halla Bol', has been sung by Ila Arun. Leicestershire spinner Jeremy Snape has signed with the Rajasthan Royals as high-performace coach.

Franchise History

The Rajasthan Royals franchise is owned by Emerging Media group under Lachlan Murdoch. The group acquired the franchise for $67 million. Incidentally, this was the least expensive franchise in the Indian Premier League and also the least fancied team in the league.

The team was initially considered as the weakest team in the IPL, as it was not having any icon or star players, but now as more than half of IPL tournament is over, the team has emerged as the top ranker. Although the team lost its initial match against Delhi Daredevils, the winning campaign started by defeating Kings XI Punjab and continued to thrill the top teams, which led them on the top of the IPL rankings.

Players

Rajasthan Royals was the least active franchise during the player auction. The team does not have a designated icon player, which saved a lot of cap space for the franchise. However the franchise was surprisingly low key during the auction, and in the end got penalized by the IPL organizing committee for failing to meet the minimum bidding criteria of $3.3 million. The highest bid by Rajasthan Royals was for the Indian middle order batsman Mohammad Kaif, who came off the board at $675,000. Shane Warne has been named the coach and captain of the side. The Royals are unique as they are the only side to have an English cricketer in their squad, Hampshire's all rounder Dimitri Mascarenhas. The Rajasthan Royals also selected Justin Langer and Morne Morkel in the player auction, but both declined to instead play county cricket.

Administration and Coaching staff

Front Office:

• Owner - Emerging Media (Manoj Badale, Lachlan Murdoch, Suresh Chellaram)
• CEO - Fraser Castellino
• President - TBA

Coaches:

• Head Coach - Shane Warne
• High Performance Coach - Jeremy Snape
• Physiotherapist - John Gloster
• Assistant Coach - Harish Joshi
• Manager - Darren Berry

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