Royals has strong, exciting squad: Sangakkara

Pays tribute to its title-winning captain, Shane Warne

Kumar Sangakkara believes the Rajasthan Royals management has succeeded in putting together an exciting and strong squad for the 15th edition of the IPL.

“I think we managed to identify the key areas which needed our attention and to kind of hit the markers (at the auction) that we set for ourselves,” said Sangakkara, the director of cricket and head coach at Royals. “I think the franchise has done an amazing job to put this exciting and strong squad together.”

He is excited about the new signings such as R. Ashwin and Yuzvendra Chahal. “We’ve got the two best spinners in the IPL in terms of off-spin and leg-spin in Chahal and Ashwin,” the Lankan batting legend said.

“We have (Trent) Boult, Prasidh (Krishna), (Navdeep) Saini, (Nathan) Coulter-Nile and (Obed) McCoy, who make up a very exciting pace unit supported by of course the retentions of (batters) Yashasvi (Jaiswal), (Sanju) Samson and (Jos) Buttler. We have secured depth in every department, with (James) Neesham, (Daryl) Mitchell and (Rassie) van der Dussen being exciting cricketers.”

Sangakkara said the Royals’ objectives for the new season was to win the trophy and play good cricket. “We have our own performance metrics that we’ll match each individual’s and the team’s performance after each match,” he said.

He also paid homage to Shane Warne, who had led Royals to its only IPL title, in the tournament’s inaugural edition in 2008. “He’s a great loss for the cricket world, a great loss for cricketers around the world, because he was such an approachable guy, who had great knowledge,” Sangakkara said.