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No different illustrious profession for the Indian cricket workforce is as tough to scale back to its essence as Suresh Raina’s. Think about it—should you had been to roll-call the names of the seven Indians, aside from Raina, to have featured in between 200 and 300 ODIs, their particular person function and even which means tends to right away crystalize within the thoughts’s eye; be it Anil Kumble, Virat Kohli, Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh, Javagal Srinath, Kapil Dev or Rohit Sharma.
Forget function and which means, can we even pin down Raina’s true batting place? For a person whose profession spanned 226 one-dayers, Raina didn’t as soon as get to carry down the identical place within the batting order for ten successive innings. That’s proper, not as soon as; in practically 15 years.
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Raina’s longest string of ODI innings in the identical place, should you should know, was 9. This was when he was promoted to No.5 for the long-winded CB Series in 2012, instantly after he batted at No.6, No.three and No.7 in the identical sequence in opposition to the West Indies.
This newfound stability of No.5 was a fixture by that tri-series in Australia and even spilled over into one match of the next Asia Cup in Bangladesh, the place he was then pushed as much as No.4. There, in opposition to the hosts he obliged with a quickfire fifty in a match remembered for Sachin Tendulkar’s hundredth hundred, solely to be promptly demoted subsequent sport. By the time the following sequence took place in Sri Lanka, Raina was organising store at No.6 once more. Somewhere alongside the way in which in a nauseatingly up-and-down journey, Raina’s place and considerably, his function, slipped by the cracks and was by no means discovered once more.
Those cracks had been fairly vast, on condition that Raina’s profession spanned two mighty eras in Indian cricket. In 2004 and whereas nonetheless a teen, Raina was the primary amongst his technology to infiltrate a aspect fizzing to the brim with superstars—Tendulkar, Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Sourav Ganguly and as well, Gautam Gambhir and Yuvraj Singh.
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Even together with his precocious play, establishing himself amongst these names was at all times going to be tough, simply because it was going to be to reestablish himself within the following period. For, by then, new superstars had changed outdated superstars fairly seamlessly; Kohli, Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan and Ajinkya Rahane had arrived, they usually quickly buttonholed the brand new narrative.
Trapped between the very best top-order on the planet and the very best finisher within the enterprise in MS Dhoni, Raina’s existence within the Indian workforce had become a deeply claustrophobic expertise.
SUPPORTING ACT
The cleft between two eras at all times makes for a captivating research in any sport. Within the house of two months in 2010—a time when the ageing superstars had been making manner for their nascent replacements—Raina made his first look as an ODI captain and as a Test batsman. The solar had shone equally on Lleyton Hewitt within the hole yr between Pete Sampras’s retirement and the rise of a younger Roger Federer, and the world lay in wait for Raina to make hay.
He did, considerably. In his very first Test innings, Raina struck his first and solely hundred, in opposition to a Sri Lankan aspect coming to phrases with the retirement of Muttiah Muralitharan from the earlier Test and on a Colombo pitch the place two double a whole lot and two different centuries had already been struck (it might have been 5 a whole lot aside from Raina’s, however Sehwag was out for 99).
His initiation into the management function didn’t go fairly as nicely. Billed as and prepped to be the heir-apparent to Dhoni, Raina captained a second-string Indian aspect (names that will quickly flip family) in a tri-series in Zimbabwe that additionally featured a transitioning Sri Lanka. India didn’t make the ultimate and Raina didn’t rating large runs in a forgettable sequence, one that can maybe solely be remembered for Sharma’s first and second ODI a whole lot.
Raina would go on to captain India in two extra sequence —in opposition to West Indies in 2011 and Bangladesh in 2014—and win each of them, however by then the workforce had found a successor to Dhoni in Kohli, who had lengthy showcased his natural-born management instincts.
What makes for a curious however telling element is the truth that even when Raina might resolve his personal place within the batting order, he shied away from a starring function. In the 12 ODIs during which he captained India, Raina batted above No.5 solely as soon as—at No.Four in a rain-curtailed sport in Trinidad. Perhaps he was selfless or maybe he was conscious of his limitations, but it surely was on this function of a foil to the greats that he really excelled in.
Just eight months after he was earmarked as a future captain, Raina misplaced his place within the ODI beginning eleven originally of the World Cup at residence. But when he returned, simply in time for the knockouts of the match, Raina proved simply how important an instinctive link-player was to the workforce. That service was quickly summoned within the Ahmedabad quarterfinal in opposition to Australia, the place he braved ferocious bouncers to attain 34 unbeaten and invaluable runs in a defining partnership with Yuvraj.
Such contributions of significance got here typically for some time. In the gnarly semifinal in opposition to Pakistan, a low-scoring affair in Mohali, Raina was certainly one of solely three batsmen within the Indian workforce to breach the 30-run mark.
Then, a yr later in Hobart, Raina lent his shoulder for one other large to face on—Kohli stole the present with an era-defining 133*, but it surely was Raina’s unbeaten 40 that ensured Kohli might play his pictures within the first place.
Make no mistake, although. The decrease middle-order is an unforgiving place, particularly in a rustic obsessive about numbers and never worth. Every subsequent Kohli, Dhawan and Sharma hundred highlighted Raina’s modest returns. His finish was nigh.
THEN IT FELL APART
Thirty-three isn’t any age for a modern-day batsman to retire. But the reality stays that Raina’s worldwide profession had been on life assist by the point he was in his late twenties. The Test profession was the primary to go, and by its finish, it was a narrative of noughts.
In the autumn of 2012 and through India’s first Test sequence because the retirements of Dravid and VVS Laxman, Raina was introduced again into the fold. The two-match sequence in opposition to New Zealand at residence was his first in a yr, what with him within the abyss since his twin geese in opposition to England on the Oval.
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The second Test in Bangalore witnessed Kohli’s first Test hundred and Raina’s final Test look on Indian soil.
In what grew to become a tough fourth innings chase after the autumn of Tendulkar and Cheteshwar Pujara’s wickets, Raina tried to launch the stress by dancing down the wicket to off-spinner Jeetan Patel, solely to overlook the ball fully and get bowled. He was out for zero and didn’t play one other Test for three years.
When he did, on the Sydney Cricket Ground in 2015, he was out on one other pair—making it 5 geese in his final seven innings. And that, as they are saying, was that.
The wheels didn’t come off fairly as spectacularly together with his limited-overs profession, however the fall was simply as staggered. Raina’s last look in India’s ODI shirt got here in England in 2018. But earlier than that sequence, he had final performed ODIs for India in 2015.
With a batting order ripe with match-winners, Raina had grow to be—in a workforce that he was as soon as destined to guide no much less—an afterthought. To the purpose the place even on the day he accepted that he had had sufficient, Raina’s retirement performed second fiddle to an even bigger and glossier send-off.
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