Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar opined that Suresh Raina’s average numbers in the last season might be the reason why the 35-year old was ignored at the IPL mega auction.
Suresh Raina has been an integral part of the Chennai Super Kings since the inaugural season, He missed just the 2020 season due to personal reasons. He played for Gujarat Lions in the 2016 and 2017 seasons when CSK was banned for two years due to some corruption charges.
In his IPL career, Raina scored 5528 runs in 200 innings with an average of 32.52 and a strike rate of 136.73 which included one hundred and 39 fifties. However, in the 2021 season, he scored 160 runs in 11 innings with a strike rate of 125 which included only one fifty. And he was also demoted from his usual no.3 position.
“He did look a little scared against pace bowling in the last season”- Sunil Gavaskar
Sunil Gavaskar pointed out that he wasn’t comfortable against proper pace bowling in the season. That might be the reason why the franchises decided to ignore him in the auction.
“For Raina I was definitely surprised. He is left-handed, does off-spin bowling, and is experienced. In the last season, in the Dubai pitches, where there is a lot of bounce, he did look a little scared and this why I feel people must have felt that even in India we will have fast bowlers and so maybe he wasn’t picked for that reason. But only the franchises could tell us why they had this feeling about him,” Suresh Raina spoke to Sports Tak.
However, there is a huge disappointment among the CSK fans as they expected the yellow army to put one bid for his ‘Chinna Thala’. Explaining the reason, CSK’s CEO Kasi Viswanath said that the left-hander didn’t fit in their composition.
“Raina has been one of the most consistent performers for CSK for the last 12 years. Of course, it was very difficult for us, no to have Raina but at the same time, you should also understand that the team composition depends on the form and kind of which any team would like to have so that’s one of the reasons why we thought he may not fit into this team,” Viswanath said in a video shared by CSK on their YouTube channel.
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