Suresh Raina: Limited to limited overs cricket?

Building an innings

Another area in which Raina is found wanting is building an innings. Raina is a specialist in short stints. “I am a 30-ball 50 batsman and I would never try and become a 60-ball 50 batsman,” as he puts it.

He will come in at a time when the team needs 70-odd runs and mostly finishers like Dhoni and Yuvraj would be batting on the other side. Therefore, he is more accustomed to playing the short but fast innings with aplomb.

It is true that when you come so low down the order, it becomes difficult to have a great average and all that matters is just scoring as many as you can while you are the crease for the tiny amount overs left and taking as much strike as possible rather than allowing the opposition to allow the tailender to be on strike. However, when the team is batting first and suddenly there is this huge collapse and half he team is inside the pavilion when only 20 odd overs have gone by, Raina can be seen as being pretty imprudent.

An example of this can be the innings at Chennai that Raina played in the home series against Pakistan, which India lost. In that match, India were struggling at 20-4. Some would say that if it wasn’t for Raina, India would’ve skittled out at a much lower total than they did. Raina did manage to make 43 runs off 88 deliveries with Dhoni batting at the other end but when he got dismissed, there were more than 16 more overs for India to bat out the innings.

A rash shot played by Raina as he tried to hoik a ball cost India several very important runs as he was the last recognised batsman who could’ve lent support to Dhoni. Everything that was then left of the Indian innings was Dhoni single-handedly scoring runs and somehow allowing the team to reach a modest total of 227 runs which could’ve been maybe even 250, had Raina stayed on and just tried to rotate the strike rather than trying to hit boundaries on a pitch that was not very conducive for batting.

Therefore, a batsman who harbours ambitions of batting up the order, should be more prudent and farseeing than he is right now while building innings.

Hence, building innings requires patience and the will to get in and fathom conditions, rather than just trying to accelerate by hitting balls that should be respected once in a while. Raina in most cases, has been unable to do so and this has led him to bat at the position of a finisher rather than someone who would patiently build innings and save one end up.

Fit for Test cricket?

Suresh Raina struggled on the tour of England in 2011

Raina is a fast, aggressive and stylish player. He is also quite obscure with small but very important contributions, be it his fielding or his batting. However, he is never taken as a viable option for Tests. Ask the cricket pundits why? And snap comes the usual – he has to find a way to play the short ball, teams have figured out and have successfully strategized and learnt to tackle his attacking batting, he lacks patience required for Test cricket and so on.

However, the fairness of the argument that a player is not good enough just because he is weak in playing a particular delivery is as good as saying that a bowler shouldn’t be selected because they can’t bowl yorkers. Not everybody can. They learn with experience and exposure which in Raina’s case hasn’t been enough. He has played just 8 Tests outside the subcontinent and that too, mostly in places like the Caribbean and England. Places like Australia are still unknown to Raina in the longer format of the game and that is not too fair to a player who has played 227 international games in the shorter format but just 17 in the longer format.

Exposure and experience is the key to Raina’s consistency in tests. However, there is no dirth of young players unearthed during Ranji Trophy who come every year equipped with technique, flair and every shot in the book. Every person is fighting for a spot in the coveted longer format, but very few even make to the fifteen, let alone in the final eleven.

Therefore, to be preferred over such talented youngsters, Raina has to correct and work out the technicalities of playing the short ball and not allow the oppositions to plan him out, to get ahead of him.

Raina has the will and potential to play a very vital role in the longer format, but he needs to be given opportunities which till now haven’t been many. He has the potential for Test cricket. Selecting him for overseas tours and giving him a stable batting position and a long run in tests would not only help his game in the longer format but also help him improve his game in the shorter formats which would be very beneficial for India’s performance across formats.