Suresh Raina made his international debut in 2005, and since then, he has come a long way. Raina is now, one of the most important members of the Indian side, in limited-over cricket. Mostly, he plays the role of a finisher, but he is more than capable of playing big innings, as well.
Raina has achieved a lot of success in the limited-over cricket, both individual, and as well as team success. As an important member of the Indian team, Raina has won Asia Cup, World Cup and Champions Trophy.
Suresh Raina’s career got a real lift after his incredible run with the bat in the Asia cup (2008). In this series, Raina scored two hundereds and a brilliant knock of 84. After a phenominal show in this series, Raina made a real case for a permanent place in the middle-order. In fact, after this series, he cemented his place in the Indian team.
Raina’s ODI batting average at different positions:
- at #3 29.05
- at #4 44.08
- at #5 35.41
- at #6 37.40
Raina represents the new age Indian cricketer- an attacking batsman who goes for the big shots with a lot of aggression and a brilliant fielder. Raina has played an instrumental role in bringing the “cultural” change, as far as the fielding is concerned. He is an absolute live-wire in the field, and arguably India’s most athletic player.
In the last 2 ODI series, Raina has struggled to score runs, but he has a decent technique as far as the ODIs are concerned, and one can expect him to comeback stronger.
Raina’s weakness has been short-pitched stuff, and because of this weakness, Raina has not done well at the Test match level. Although, he made a great start to his test career by scoring a hundered on debut against Sri Lanka, but after a few good innings, he started struggling, and lost his place in the test squad.
In his first 4 Test Innings, Raina scored 120, 62, 41* & 86, but as India started touring abroad and his weakness against short-pitched stuff was exposed, he scored only 4 fifties in his next 25 innings. And, as his bad-patch continued over a long period of time, Raina lost his place in the Test team, and since then, he has been made to stay away from the Test arena.
In all his interviews, Raina always talk about Test cricket, and how hard he’s trying to get back in the Test team and perform well at the Test matchlevel. But, as of now, his game is far behind than what it is required for the most testing level of cricket, and to make a test comeback and perform well, he would have to make many technichal adjustements, and for that, he needs to play more and more Ranji Trophy cricket.
