He’ll have to think about bowling more off spin: Kumar Sangakkara on the areas RR spinner Ravichandran Ashwin can improve

Rajasthan Royals (RR) Director of Cricket Kumar Sangakkara has admitted that while Ravichandran Ashwin is a great bowler, he would need to work on bowling off-spin more frequently.

Sangakkara made the statement following Rajasthan's seven-wicket defeat to the Gujarat Titans (GT) in the IPL 2022 final at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad on Sunday.

Ashwin was introduced in the 12th over of the innings during GT’s chase of 131. The veteran bowler preferred to bowl quite a few carrom balls instead of regulation off spin. He couldn’t make any impact and ended the final with disappointing figures of 0 for 32 from three overs.

Speaking after the loss, Sangakkara admitted that the 35-year-old will have to rethink his strategy of not bowling a lot of off-spin during his spells. Responding to a Sportskeeda query, he answered:

“Ash (Ashwin), he’s done a great job for us. Even for Ash, being a legend in terms of what he has achieved on the cricketing pitch, there will be a lot of thinking and improvements to do, especially with his off spin and bowling more of it."

Sangakkara added that RR have a lot of improvements to make in all areas, especially in the middle-order batting.

“If you take our batting, we had contributions from Jos (Buttler), Sanju (Samson), and Shimron Hetmyer in the early stages. Riyan (Parag) and Devdutt (Padikkal) played well in patches. In terms of overall performance, we need a little bit more from the support-role players.”

Speaking specifically about Parag, he hinted that the youngster could bat higher in the order next season. Kumar Sangakkara asserted:

“Riyan has got huge potential. We’ve got to work him into a higher batting number by the time we come in next season. We need to groom him as an early middle-order player rather than a death hitter.”

20-year-old Parag scored 183 runs in 17 matches at an average of 16.64 and a strike rate of 138.64.

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“This was the strongest side that we put out” - Kumar Sangakkara on RR’s playing XI

Barring a couple of changes, RR preferred to stick to a more or less fixed playing XI for most of IPL 2022. Asked if someone like James Neesham could have been utilized better, Kumar Sangakkara responded that it was hard to say.

“We managed to try most of those players - Daryl Mitchell a couple of games, Rassie (van der Dussen) and Neesh (James Neesham) also played a couple of games. But then, when you look at our bowling attack, with the four overseas combination, once we have our two overseas bowlers, we could only fit in Jos and Hetty (Hetmyer) into the side."

Kumar Sangakkara added:

"We can’t play Neesh as a full fifth bowling option, he’ll have to be a sixth bowling option. When you take the quality of the players that we had, this was the best and strongest side that we put out.”

Rajasthan batted first after winning the toss in the IPL 2022 final. However, they managed a disappointing 130 for 9 on the board, a total which GT chased down with ease.