Pumped up RR aim to sully MI's dream run

There was a pleasant sight on offer for the few fans of Rajasthan Royals who had turned up to watch the practice session at the Sawai Mansingh Stadium on Wednesday evening. The sight of Sanju Samson engaging in a game of foot volleyball with his teammates.

It probably didn't matter that he wasn't the most impressive performer on show in the pre-nets warm-up, or that his team was thwarted 7-1 eventually. The fact that he was also knocking the ball around later in the nets, would have been more than the compensation for that.

For as much as Royals would've missed their captain in the last few games, his absence due to side strain was adequately filled up by Vaibhav Suryavanshi, the 14-year-old replacement. So much so that, despite Samson's return, the star attraction for the sparse crowd at the venue was overshadowed by Suryavanshi, who was in high demand for autographs and selfies while he was going through his catching drills near the boundary ropes.

There is an understandable reason for that. A new star of Indian cricket