"Want to get into their brains and understand the reason" - Parthiv Patel baffled with RR sending Ashwin to open against PBKS in IPL 2023

Former Indian cricketer Pathiv Patel was surprised to see the Rajasthan Royals (RR) send Ravichandran Ashwin to open their innings with Yashasvi Jaiswal against the Punjab Kings (PBKS) in Guwahati on Wednesday.

Star opener Jos Buttler hurt his finger on the field and so the Royals decided to send Ashwin while Buttler got his injury checked. This baffled Patel as he felt they already had two capable openers in Dhruv Jurel and Devdutt Padikkal.

In a video posted by Parthiv Patel on Twitter, here's what he had to say about the decision to use Ravichandran Ashwin as the makeshift opener for RR:

"They sent R Ashwin to open in his place and that surprised me a lot. It's not that he wasn't capable, but they already had two batters in Devdutt Padikkal and Dhruv Jurel, who has opened for Uttar Pradesh.

"Whoever took that technical decision, I want to get into their brains and understand the reason for thought process. Not criticising Ashwin, just the decision."

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Sanju Samson explained RR's reason to hold back Devdutt Padikkal

RR skipper Sanju Samson spoke about their batting order after the loss to PBKS. He explained that the match-ups were the reason why they held back Devdutt Padikkal. Being a left-hander, they wanted Padikkal to tackle the PBKS spinners, but the ploy didn't work out as they would have expected.

On this, Samson stated:

"I thought we did well to restrict them to 197. Jos wasn't fully fit (injured his finger while taking the catch), the thinking behind keeping Padikkal (in the middle order) was to tackle their two spinners in the middle overs."

The Royals lost by just five runs and that made Padikkal's innings of 21(26) and the ploy to send Ashwin look even worse. They will need to get their tactics right in their next game against the Delhi Capitals on Saturday.