IPL 2024: Rajasthan Royals vs Lucknow Super Giants Tips & Preview - Visitors Aiming To Reach New Heights This Season

After a disappointing performance at home last season, Rajasthan Royals will be eager to rectify the wrongs and start the new Indian Premier League (IPL) campaign with a win against the Lucknow Super Giants. The Sawai Man Singh Stadium will host this mercurial encounter on Sunday, March 24.

The hosts have not won the IPL title since they won the inaugural edition of the competition back in 2008. Meanwhile, the visitors are one of the newest franchises of the IPL, and this will be their third season in action. LSG have done well in the league so far and will be eager to take the next step.

Last year, the Royals fared rather poorly at home, winning only one and losing four games at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium. For three seasons prior to 2023, the Royals hadn’t played at home. Whether that played a massive role in negating their home advantage factor, we’ll soon find out. It’s nonetheless a great chance for LSG to exploit this.

One thing the Royals can take comfort from is how much this venue has tended towards the spinners over the last couple of years. In the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20s at this venue in October 2022, spinners held an economy of just 6.74. The Royals have two gun spinners, R Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal, to exploit that. They didn’t fire last year, and the Royals’ spinners were comfortably outbowled by their counterparts in those five home games.

Royals spinners conceded at an economy of 8.63, while spinners from other teams went at 7.50. Royals also averaged 27.5 as compared to 22.8 of the others. Here in lies a chance for LSG to do something similar. They have decent spinners. Krunal Pandya, K Gowtham, Ravi Bishnoi and Amit Mishra to exploit that.

Yashasvi Jaiswal and Jos Buttler have been the second-fastest opening pair in IPL since 2022, behind Prithvi Shaw and David Warner when the minimum criteria is set to 500 runs. However, they’ve seldom fired in unison over the last couple of seasons.

In 2022, Butler top scored with 863 runs at an average of 57.5, while Jaiswal made just 258. In 2023, Jaiswal took centre stage, hitting 625 runs at 52.1, while Buttler made 392 runs. Now, they’ll be hoping both fire in unison and if they do that, the possibilities are endless.

Last year, Butler’s strike rate fell below 150, and his average was below 30 for the first time since 2016. They’ll hope he can regroup again. Jaiswal has the confidence of runs and a Player of the series winning performance in the England Tests behind him as he looks to do an encore.