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Rajasthan Royals (RR) owner Manoj Badale opened up on the captaincy rumours surrounding Ravindra Jadeja ahead of 2026. This comes after the veteran all-rounder and Sam Curran were traded by the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in exchange for Sanju Samson for a fee of INR 14 and 2.4 crore respectively. Badale remarked that they currently have 6-7 players in contention to take up the side's captaincy ahead of IPL 2026.
"Not really. And it's not part of the conversation right now. We actually have got the player leadership group together twice, once including him, to make it clear that we are going to go through a process over the next couple of months. We've got probably six or seven players that could be RR captain," Badale said in an interview with ESPNcricinfo.
"We didn't want to get into that and embark on that part of the process until we knew the trade was happening. Otherwise, it becomes a futile process. Now that the trade is done, our absolute short-term focus is the auction. Once the auction is done, our next focus then will be the captaincy process," he added.
Jadeja's previous captaincy stint ended as a failure
Jadeja had previously taken up CSK's captaincy in IPL 2022, but the side only won two games out of eight under his leadership and MS Dhoni soon took over the duties once again. He had been with the Chennai-based franchise for the last eight IPL seasons, but has now made a return to the team from where his IPL career started back in 2007. The 36-year-old had spent two seasons with the Royals before moving to the Kochi Tuskers Kerala for the 2011 campaign.
Badale's views on Jadeja coming in
Badale also shared his views on Jadeja coming into the team and remarked that any owner in the league would be tempted to sign a player like the all-rounder. He then revealed that the 36-year-old had called him after he got to know that CSK had put him up for trade and was very happy to return to RR.
"Personally, any owner would be mad not to be tempted by Jadeja. I don't need to talk about his cricket credentials: he's won trophies in the IPL, he's won trophies on the international stage. He's arguably one of our best batters, one of our best bowlers, one of our best fielders," Badale stated.
Even though he played for us [in 2008-09], I didn't really know him as a person. And also the person I knew was a 19-year-old. I mean, obviously there's a nice narrative about returning home and coming back to where he started, but in truth, that's been a bigger theme for him. He called me when CSK informed him that he was up for trade. He was so happy to be coming back to RR," he further added.
Rajasthan Royals' current squad: Shubham Dubey, Vaibhav Suryavanshi, Kunal Rathore, Lhuan-Dre Pretorius, Shimron Hetmyer, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Dhruv Jurel, Riyan Parag, Yudhvir Singh Charak, Jofra Archer, Akash Madhwal, Kumar Kartikeya Singh, Tushar Deshpande, Fazalhaq Farooqi, Kwena Maphaka, Ashok Sharma, Nandre Burger, Ravindra Jadeja, Sam Curran and Donovan Ferreira.
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