(ESPNCRICINFO) – Sanju Samson led from the front with an unbeaten 82 from 52 balls, as Rajasthan Royals opened their IPL campaign with a hard-earned 20-run victory over Lucknow Super Giants in Jaipur.

After winning the toss for his team, Samson’s knock was the mainstay of Royals’ imposing 193 for 4, and a tight contest hadn’t seemed remotely likely when Trent Boult and Nandre Burger reduced LSG to 11 for 3 in the first four overs of their reply.

However, KL Rahul – on his return from injury – teamed up with Nicholas Pooran to take the chase deep in a fifth-wicket stand of 85 from 52 balls that ended from the first ball of the 17th over, as Sandeep Sharma popped up with a priceless spell of death bowling that left LSG with too much to do.

With 38 still needed from 12 balls, Sandeep’s penultimate over was arguably even more important, as he limited the hard-swinging Pooran to just a brace of boundaries in an 11-run over, allowing Avesh Khan to close out the contest with ease. Pooran finished unbeaten on 64 from 41 balls.

Samson certainly knows how to launch an IPL campaign in style. For the fifth consecutive IPL campaign, dating back to 2020, he opened Royals’ account with a half-century, this time in an innings featuring three fours and six sixes, the best of which – from the penultimate ball of the innings – was a formidable inside-out drill over extra cover from Mohsin Khan.

The bulk of Samson’s work was done in the course of a 93-run stand with Riyan Parag, that spanned 62 balls and bridged a potentially tricky period at the end of the powerplay, in which Jos Buttler’s streaky 11 from nine balls, and Yashasvi Jaiswal’s more focussed cameo of 24 from 12, had telegraphed a potentially tricky pitch for comfortable stroke-play.

Certainly, LSG’s spinners found some purchase on the cracked, dry surface. Krunal Pandya, on his 33rd birthday, wheeled through his four boundary-less overs for 19, and could have dismissed Parag for a golden duck when he induced a leading edge back down the pitch, only for Samson at the non-striker’s end to get in the way, completely inadvertently, as he stood his ground with the ball lobbing towards his helmet.

Both men, however, stepped up their intensity after the strategic time-out, when the extra pace of Yash Thakur entered the fray. Three sixes poured forth in a 21-run over, including back-to-back pulls from Samson off undercooked bouncers, and after bringing up Royals’ 100 with another six off Ravi Bishnoi in the 11th over, Samson marched onto his fifty from 33 balls – by which stage Parag should have been removed for 29, only for Mohsin at square leg to make a hash of a top-edged sweep.