Rahul Dravid: RR can't afford many more mistakes

Mohammed Siraj. KL Rahul. Yuzvendra Chahal. One by one, ex-RCB players have returned to Bengaluru in IPL 2025 and played a part in beating their former team. Now, the spotlight is on Rahul Dravid.

The first RCB captain, now guiding Rajasthan Royals from the dugout, returns home bearing the responsibility of turning around a faltering campaign. RR have won only two out of eight games and are on a four-match losing streak.

"Do we have an RCB player from last time? Play him in the XI straightaway!" RR's head coach Dravid said with a laugh on Wednesday, perhaps having momentarily forgotten that Wanindu Hasaranga and Shimron Hetmyer were once part of RCB. Hasaranga was their highest wicket-taker during their run to the playoffs in 2022.

"No, not at all, man. I don't think about it like that, to be very honest. Just trying to play a good game of cricket," Dravid was quick to clarify. "We know we have to play well to be still alive in this tournament. I know we've lost a couple of close games coming into this, but we've played some good cricket as well. It's one of those tournaments where a few balls going here or there and we might have been in a slightly different position, but you need to play well in those critical moments."

In the two close games that Dravid referenced, RR needed just nine runs to win in the final over with plenty of wickets in hand against both Delhi Capitals and Lucknow Super Giants. They lost the first via a Super Over and the second by two runs.

The pitches at the Chinnaswamy Stadium have proved challenging for batters so far this season. RCB have made first-innings scores of 169 for 8, 163 for 7, and 95 for 9 in a 14-over game in their home games and lost every time.

"You just have to go for it irrespective and that's a given," Dravid said when asked about how to approach batting on such surfaces. "But I think every surface will be different. The last one, I was just having a chat with the groundsman, it was under covers for a really long period of time, so it was probably not a good one to judge it on.

"The wicket I'm seeing here, from at least what I can make of it, looks a really good wicket, so I can't really say how those wickets looked in earlier games. But the track that's been produced for this one looks actually to be a very good cricket wicket and I think it should be a pretty high-scoring game.

"Like I said earlier, it's a very important game for us. Every game from here on, the position we find ourselves in, we can't afford to make many mistakes. We've got to start climbing that table quickly and we've got to start winning games quickly, there's no options, no chances of slipping up anymore."

Dravid was asked his opinion on the trend of teams struggling to win at home in IPL 2025. Only Gujarat Titans, Delhi Capitals and Mumbai Indians have won more than they have lost at home.

"I'm not really sure what specific franchises might have wanted from their curators or from their pitches," Dravid said. "But I think home advantage, generally, the teams are new as well, right? It's the first year of a big auction cycle, so for a lot of the players, even though they may be your home players, they are playing for those teams or those grounds for the first time.

"For example, at RCB, someone like a Phil Salt was at KKR and he's coming here for the first time. Someone like Nitish Rana who was not with us and he's playing for us this year, so for him, Jaipur is actually kind of a new ground in some ways.

"So maybe sometimes, I think that when you just have a big auction and there's a change of squad and a change of team, the home advantage may not be that significant. But maybe as you go later on into the cycle, maybe you might start seeing their significance a little bit more because then your players get to practise and play a little bit more on that compared to the opposition team."