Rajasthan Royals were divided from within on who should captain the side in IPL 2025, a report has claimed. The matter comes to the fore after Rahul Dravid ended his stint as the RR head coach on Saturday, and even turned down a broader position offered to him within the franchise. A report has claimed that there was a three-way battle between Sanju Samson, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Riyan Parag for RR captaincy, with no clear mandate achieved by any.
Triple-threat captaincy battle in RR
As per Cricbuzz, there were three separate school of thoughts in RR on who should be the team’s captain. The report claims that one section pushed for Parag to stay on as captain as he had led the team in a few matches in Saju’s absence. Another group backed Jaiswal to be the skipper, dubbing him as a future leader. Meanwhile, a third wanted Samson to stay on as they didn’t want to see any big change.
“The buzz outside the setup suggests that within the franchise there were three different schools of thought: one group pushed for Riyan Parag, who captained the side in a few games; another backed Yashasvi Jaiswal as the future leader; while a third preferred maintaining the status quo – with Samson continuing at the helm,” the report stated.
Parag captained RR in 8 games out of which the team managed to win just 2 matches. Meanwhile, Jaiswal has never captained the side before. But his captaincy aspirations are no secret. Samson continues to remain the hot topic for RR despite Dravid’s exit, as it remains to be seen where the Kerala batter would next head to, if he has indeed asked RR to release him ahead of IPL 2026. RR will now be on the hunt for a new head coach as well and it might as well could be Kumar Sangakkara.
