The Rajasthan Royals are considering trading their captain, Sanju Samson, their most experienced player. According to a Cricbuzz report on August 13, Samson, 30, has asked the Royals to either release him or trade him before IPL 2026 auctions. After this request, the Royals approached other teams to gauge their interest in Samson.
Apparently, Manoj Badale, the owner of Rajasthan Royals, mentioned some players from other teams that the Royals would be interested in getting in return for Samson. Chennai was one of the teams approached and Badale expressed interest in Ruturaj Gaikwad, Ravindra Jadeja or Shivam Dube. But Chennai Super Kings are not willing to let go any of these players. So the Samson move from Jaipur to Chennai is stalled unless CSK comes up with an alternative offer or bid for him in the auction.
The report also says Samson won’t go into the auction as many teams have already shown interest in signing him directly. While Samson can technically stay with Rajasthan as teams have limited power in such situations, reports say tension has grown between Samson and the team over issues like releasing Jos Buttler.
Samson had earlier spoken about the difficulty of letting players go. “Releasing him has been one of the toughest decisions for me. I told him during the England series over dinner that I was still not over it. If I could change one thing in the IPL, I would change the rule of releasing players every three years, Samson told Star Sports before the last IPL season.
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Samson hasn’t spoken publicly on the issue. In a recent podcast with R Ashwin, he praised the Royals. He also spoke well of Vaibhav Suryavanshi, the 14-year-old left-handed batter who replaced him at the top of the order. Sanju Samson has played 149 IPL matches for Rajasthan Royals, scored 4027 runs with 2 centuries and 23 fifties. He is the highest run-scorer for the Jaipur-based franchise and the only player to score over 4000 runs for them in the IPL. Royals retained Samson for 18 crores before the IPL 2025 auctions. He has captained RR in 67 matches, winning 33, which is the most by any Rajasthan Royals captain.
Ruturaj Gaikwad has scored 2502 runs in 71 IPL matches for Chennai. He is the 4th highest run-scorer for CSK in the IPL and was the captain of the team before the start of IPL 2024.
