Jofra Archer is not part of Rajasthan Royals’ final IPL 2025 clash against Chennai Super Kings at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi. The CSK vs RR clash is to avoid the wooden spoon as both teams are languishing at the bottom two places.
Royal Challengers Bengaluru lock horns against Chennai Super Kings in their last match of the Indian Premier League 2025. With nothing left for these two teams to play for the playoffs, the clash at the Arun Jaitley Stadium serves as a wooden-spoon derby.
RR and CSK are placed in ninth and 10th, respectively and look to avoid the embarrassing last-placed finish. Meanwhile, RR are without their talisman pacer Jofra Archer.
Why is Archer not playing?
Jofra Archer has been sidelined from IPL 2025 after the tournament’s resumption, following a brief suspension, due to a thumb injury. Archer also missed RR’s previous match against Punjab Kings and RR went down by 10 runs.
Archer sustained the injury while fielding during RR’s match against Kolkata Knight Riders on May 4. Despite the injury looking minor initially, further assessments confirmed ligament damage. This ruled him out of the remaining matches of the season.
Coming to the CSK vs RR clash, RR skipper Sanju Samson won the toss and decided to bat first despite not being able to chase targets down.
“We will bowl first. Looking at the last game against DC, there was something in it. There’s no hiding in this game. We got to do it today. Everyone has to be a match-winner. They have to think like that. We need to be smarter and braver. We have a couple of changes. Yudhvir comes in,” Samson said at the toss.
“We want to express ourselves in our batting department. Need to figure out which individual will do well in which slot next year. Need to work on our bowling. Once we were out of the tournament, we wanted to find the answers for the next year. Need to look in to the combination and a couple of players we can pick in auction. We are on a roll in the batting department and we want to continue doing that, we struggled at the start of the season. When you are constantly under pressure that doesnt’ work. You don’t need to play all kind of shots, need to be selective,” CSK captain MS Dhoni said at the toss.
