Sanju Samson, the captain of Rajasthan Royals, has made his way to the BCCI’s Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru. He’s hoping to get the go-ahead to keep wickets after sitting out for three matches in IPL 2025. On Monday, he took a flight from Guwahati to Bengaluru to meet with the folks at the Centre of Excellence, chasing a full clearance, as reported by Cricbuzz. After having surgery on his right index finger, he only got a temporary and partial nod to play in this season of the IPL.
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Once he’s at the Centre, Samson will go through some testing by the Sport Science team and ask for the green light to take on his full responsibilities again. Because he hasn’t been fully cleared, he handed over the captaincy to Riyan Parag and has been serving as an impact player in the first three matches of IPL 2025. According to a source, he’s hoping to get the approval he needs to play as a wicketkeeper for the remaining games and is likely to return as captain next week.
The Royals are set to face off against Punjab Kings on Saturday, April 5, in Chandigarh. So far, Samson has managed scores of 66, 13, and 20 in the three games he’s played, though he hasn’t been fielding this time around. If he gets the thumbs up from the Centre of Excellence, he’ll be back behind the stumps and take charge of the team once more.
Rajasthan has had a shaky start to their IPL journey. They lost their first two matches but finally found their footing and won against Chennai Super Kings. It was a bit rough going for them initially when opener Yashasvi Jaiswal got out after just hitting a four off the first ball, thanks to Khaleel Ahmed. However, Nitish Rana stepped up his game, scoring 82 runs off just 42 balls, and shared a solid partnership with Samson, who contributed 20 runs.
Nitish really found his groove, playing some lovely strokes to keep the momentum going. He flicked, pulled, and even launched some impressive sixes off the pacers. He used the slog sweep to great effect against Ravichandran Ashwin, hitting two sixes in that particular over. It took only 21 balls for Nitish to reach his half-century, helping Rajasthan zoom to a total of 79/1 during the powerplay, which is their third-best score in IPL history.
