Rajasthan Royals captain Sanju Samson on Monday said that it is great to have the likes of cricketing greats like Kumar Sangakarra and Lasith Malinga in the team management. The 2008 champions will take on Sunrisers Hyderabad in their IPL 2022 opener at the MCA Stadium, Pune on Tuesday. 

The Rajasthan Royals roped in Devdutt Padikkal, Yuzvendra Chahal, Ravichandran Ashwin, Trent Boult and Shimron Hetmyer in the IPL 2022 mega-auction held last month. 

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Skipper Samson wants the players to understand each other. 

“Our main focus is to get together as soon as possible. We have a different squad this time, some new members in the team, so it is important to come together and understand your teammates. We definitely had a lot of learning from the last 2 to 3 seasons. We discussed and worked on a few options and we got a really very good team in the auction,” Samson said on Monday. 

The Royals have finished in the bottom two the last three seasons. They open their campaign in Pune, where Samson said wickets will be fresh and big totals could be put up. 

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“Pune is a different kind of ground, it’s an open ground so the wind comes into play there. Wickets will be fresh at the start of the tournament and will help the fast bowlers I believe. It can be a high-scoring game but it depends on how the powerplay turns out, so we’ll see,” Samson said. 

The Rajasthan Royals have IPL’s joint highest wicket-taker Lasith Malinga as their bowling coach. Sri Lankan great Kumar Sangakarra is their Director of Cricket. 

Samson further revealed Malinga’s message to him, which the RR skipper said that he has never heard before. 

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“Whatever chats we had with Lasith, he makes bowling look very simple and easy and that it gives a lot of clarity for every bowler in the side. He said something to me that I’ve never heard before. He said: ‘there are only two kind of batsmen in the world – right and left-handed. You only need to learn how to bowl to only two batsmen.”