Rajasthan Royals lead owner Manoj Badale has wholeheartedly embraced the franchise’s reputation as the IPL’s premier talent nursery, but insists that spotting and honing potential is only part of the team’s broader ambition to win titles.
“The media has been always very kind describing us (Rajasthan Royals) as India's most important talent factory. And, of course, the stats bear that out pretty unambiguously,” Manoj Badale said during an interview with ESPNCricinfo.
No franchise has consistently unearthed prospects quite like the Royals - from Yashasvi Jaiswal, Riyan Parag and Vaibhav Sooryavanshi to Sanju Samson.
Even the extraordinary rise of Pravin Tambe, who debuted for RR in 2013 at 41 years and 212 days, remains one of the league’s most iconic talent stories. Yet Badale stressed that nurturing gifted players is a by-product, not the objective.
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“But I've always had a wry smile when I read those things because we've never had any other objective – certainly for the past four years – of doing anything other than winning the IPL. We are not only here to develop young talent. We are here to compete and win,” Manoj Badale reasserted, laying out the team’s larger goal.
Manoj Badale was also quick to highlight that outcome-based targets in a tournament as competitive as the IPL could be a slippery slope.
“Again, I come back to the unpredictability of the IPL. As stakeholders, as shareholders, as owners, it's too tough a competition to set goals in terms of outcomes. It's naive to say we must win the IPL this year because the margins between the teams are so thin and a couple of tosses here or there, a couple of umpiring decisions here or there can take that away from you.”
Instead, the Royals’ modus operandi is built around controllables.
“So we don't define our goals in terms of outcomes, we define our goals in terms of inputs. The things that you can control, like squad selection, like behaviours, like culture, like leadership, structure, those are the things you have to focus on, not the outcomes,” Manoj Badale explained.
Manoj Badale also laid out the Royals’ reasoning behind moving on from long-time captain Sanju Samson - one of the finest products of RR’s famed talent factory - and bringing back Ravindra Jadeja ahead of the IPL 2026 season.
“So when he (Sanju) says, 'Sir, I want to move on, I'm emotionally drained; I almost care too much and I feel like I need a fresh chapter', when he asks that, you have to listen. I was really clear with him that we would cooperate and try to seek an alternative chapter for him, but we would only do it if it was a player trade and we would only do it if our view was that the trade made the franchise stronger. And to be fair to him, he respected that. He agreed with that and he abided by that,” Manoj Badale said.
"Sanju Samson is so authentic, we just respected his desire. But we were clear with him that we would only satisfy that desire if it made the franchise as strong or stronger,” he added.
On bringing back Jadeja, a member of the Royals’ title-winning squad from 2008 who went on to become an icon in Indian cricket and the IPL, Manoj Badale noted, “Personally, any owner would be mad not to be tempted by Jadeja.”
“I don't need to talk about his cricket credentials: he's won trophies in the IPL, he's won trophies on the international stage. He's arguably one of our best batters, one of our best bowlers, one of our best fielders.”
