IPL 2025 Rajasthan Royals (RR) Best Retained Players List

October 3, 2024 Adesh Kothari

Sanju Samson an automatic choice in our best predicted retained players list for Rajasthan Royals (RR) for IPL 2025.

The IPL 2025 retention rules are official, and each team has time only till October 31st, 2024 to submit the list of players that they would like to retain. A plenty of new changes have been made in the rule – right from the player purse deduction to the newly bought uncapped player type change. With these changes, teams not only have the freedom to retain but also a choice to RTM the players if retaining costs them more.

But how do things look for Rajasthan Royals if they were to go about player retentions? Well, before we get to the retention strategy, how have RR performed in the last 3 years? Well, RR finished as the Runner-up in 2022, just failed to qualify in 2023 by finishing 5th, and in 2024, RR did manage to qualify for the Playoffs, but failed to proceed beyond that. So, in all Rajasthan Royals have had a fairly successful three years, but with no Trophy success.

Now, as we know, BCCI has designed player retention in such a way that first player retention will cost 18 Cr, second player retention will cost 14 Cr, and third player retention will cost 11 Cr to the team. Interestingly, the fourth retention will once again cost 18 Cr to the team, and the fifth retention will cost 14 Cr. However, retaining an uncapped player will cost only 4 Cr to the team. With such hefty prices, RR will not find it easy to retain more than 4 players.

RR Best Retained Players List Decoded – IPL 2025

Now, if we look at the current Rajasthan Royals, three players, who were also retained in IPL 2022 will for sure get retained in 2025 too irrespective of the price BCCI had allowed, and those are Sanju Samson, Jos Buttler, and Yashasvi Jaiswal. Thankfully, BCCI’s price retentions aren’t too costly for these players, hence RR won’t mind spending 18 Cr on Sanju Samson, 14 Cr on Jos Buttler, and 11 Cr on Yashassvi Jaiswal.

Now, overall RR won’t mind spending 43 Cr on these 3 most valuable assets, although Sanju Samson’s salary can be negotiated to 14-16 Cr with a purse of 18 Cr still getting deducted. These three players form a valuable core for RR, and they are also one of the most dangerous trio in the Indian Premier League. Moreover, the stakes have also risen for these three players, and Yashassvi especially given the way he has performed for India.

Now, beyond these three players, if RR plan to retain a fourth player, they will have to shell out 18 Cr for this. This will be a big ask seeing there are options in the form of Riyan Parag, Trent Boult, and Yuzvendra Chahal. None of these players are such big players for RR to shell out 18 Cr or even 14 Cr. Thus, buying back these players via RTM in the Mega Auction will be a wise choice for Rajasthan Royals. Overall, RR will get 2 more RTM options if they retain only 3 capped players.

Sandeep Sharma – The Uncapped Player

Finally, talking about the fourth retention, RR will mostly go for an uncapped player. The recent change in the uncapped rule converts a capped player to an uncapped player if that player hasn’t played an international match for more than 5 years. From the RR team, there are very few promising uncapped players, and Sandeep Sharma, who will be an uncapped player now will get the due advantage with this scheme. So, expect RR to retain Sandeep Sharma for 4 Cr as an uncapped player.