No local player in Rajasthan Royals

Defending champions Rajasthan Royals do not have a single player from the state that they represent in the IPL. By Sai Prasad MahapatraThe string of events during the Rajasthan Royals send off to South Africa had a very Rajasthani feel to it. But a look at the players heading for the trophy and one could not even find a single player from Rajasthan.While the rest of the franchisees have at least one player from their local city, the Rajasthan Royals are an exception."Seven of these players are from other catchment areas of Gujarat. Ravindra Jadeja, Siddharth Trivedi, Niraj Patel, Yusuf Pathan and a few others. We look at our development area. We are not looking at one area like a Rajasthan or a Jaipur. We are looking at a larger area," said Raghy Iyer, CMO, Rajasthan Royals.The Rajasthan Royals side is right in saying that since the tournament shifted to South Africa they had prone down the side to a smaller number and they couldn't accomodate local players.It all started when Pankaj Singh switched sides from Rajasthan Royals to the Bangalore Royal Challangers earlier this year. That left the Royals with two local players, Gajendra Singh and Mohammad Arif, who also missed the bus owing to rationalisation and cost cutting.The people of Rajasthan will have to embrace and root for their team full of outsiders. It will be interesting to see whether the Rajasthan Royals can re-create the same magic with outsiders like they did last time also when local players' roles where next to negligible.