Sunil Gavaskar Criticizes Rajasthan Royals’ ‘Unthinking Cricket’ Under Coach Rahul Dravid After Fifth Consecutive IPL 2025 Defeat

Sunil Gavaskar Criticizes Rajasthan Royals: After bottling a third successive chase in the IPL 2025 season, the Rajasthan Royals are staring at the exit door sooner than expected this time. Taking the field without skipper Sanju Samson, Rajasthan succumbed to an 11-run defeat to the Royal Challengers Bengaluru at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium, extending their losing streak to five matches, their longest in 15 years.

It was also the Royals’ seventh defeat in nine matches, leaving them on the eighth spot in the standings. However, India batting legend Sunil Gavaskar could not hold back on Rajasthan’s lack of application under head coach Rahul Dravid.

“Where is the thought process there? You can’t expect inexperienced players to always get it right, but still… It’s just a different kind of cricket," Gavaskar said.

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The loss to Bengaluru meant Rajasthan are barely hanging by a thread to find a place in the playoffs. They have lost seven games out of nine, and just one more loss will end their IPL 2025 campaign.

“With Rajasthan Royals, I’m talking about the earlier matches where I wasn’t at the ground. I just saw them. So, you’re not always able to get the feeling of what’s happening. But here, I was on the ground and you could see the kind of cricket that was being played," Gavaskar said while speaking on Star Sports.

“And with someone like Rahul Dravid as the coach, it was quite baffling—it was unthinking cricket. Dravid was always so precise in his thinking and I would’ve thought that kind of approach would’ve seeped into some of the Rajasthan batters," Gavaskar added.

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The former Indian cricketer questioned the franchise’s thought process during crucial games. Unfortunately, Rajasthan have now bottled three consecutive chases, for the most part in which they looked like the side on top.

“Where is the thought process there? You can’t expect inexperienced players to always get it right, but still… It’s just a different kind of cricket," Gavaskar said.

The loss to Bengaluru meant Rajasthan are barely hanging by a thread to find a place in the playoffs. They have lost seven games out of nine, and just one more loss will end their IPL 2025 campaign.

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