After a long wait, England's star Joe Root finally made his Indian Premier League debut on May 7, 2023, for the Rajasthan Royals against SunRisers Hyderabad in Jaipur. Despite going unsold in previous IPL auctions, Root enrolled himself again and was finally picked by the Rajasthan Royals for Rs 1 crore in the accelerated round.


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Root's interest in playing the IPL was driven by the upcoming ODI World Cup to be held in India in October-November. After arriving in India, he spent time with the squad but did not get an opportunity in the first 10 games of IPL 2023. However, Rajasthan Royals were forced to make changes to their XI after two consecutive defeats, and Root was named in the playing XI for the first time.



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Rajasthan Royals made several changes, bringing in Root and Murugan Ashwin while dropping Jason Holder and Adam Zampa. Interestingly, their premier left-arm pacer, Trent Boult, was not named in the substitutes, with Sanju Samson citing a couple of injuries in the squad.


Despite Rajasthan Royals losing two matches on the bounce, they were still in the top 4 of the IPL 2023 points table with 10 points from 10 matches. Root expressed his excitement about his upcoming Ashes and Test summer in England but was completely focused on IPL 2023, talking up the morale in the Rajasthan Royals camp before the crunch match in Jaipur on Sunday.


"I’m very passionate about playing for England clearly. It was a dream to just play one Test match, let alone so many. Looking forward to what’s to come later on in the year. But got my hands full now and I’m enjoying what’s happening here right now," said Root.


Root's IPL debut was highly anticipated, and fans were eager to see how he would perform in the T20 format. On the other hand, SunRisers Hyderabad, who were struggling, made a significant change by dropping Harry Brook after a series of failures and replacing him with Glenn Phillips for the crucial match against Rajasthan Royals.


Rajasthan (Playing XI) - Jos Buttler, Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sanju Samson (C/WK), Joe Root, Dhruv Jurel, Shimron Hetmyer, Ravichandran Ashwin, Murugan Ashwin, Sandeep Sharma, Kuldip Yadav, Yuzvendra Chahal.

Impact Players nominated by Rajasthan - Devdutt Padikkal, Riyan Parag, Jason Holder, Obed McCoy and Adam Zampa.


Hyderabad (Playing XI) - Abhishek Sharma, Rahul Tripathi, Aiden Markram (C), Heinrich Klaasen (WK), Glenn Phillips, Abdul Samad, Marco Jansen, Vivrant Sharma (In for Mayank Agarwal), Mayank Markande, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, T Natarajan.


Impact Players nominated by Hyderabad - Harry Brook, Anmolpreet Singh, Mayank Dagar, Nitish Kumar Reddy and Sanvir Singh.