Short ball snaps long rope
“THERE will be bouncers.” The tone is almost apocalyptic, as if you could replace ‘bouncers’ with ‘blood’ and still keep it relevant. And the first visual you see subsequently is of Suresh Raina dealing with a short-pitched delivery targeted at his head. He ungainly ducks out of harm’s way.
This is the official promo for India’s upcoming limited-overs tour to Australia. One that Raina will only play a part role in after being left out from the ODI squad. But his cameo in the promo is pithy. It’s a brazen indication of how he’s perceived by those hard-selling a bilateral series that is lacking much context. Which is to say, a flat-track bully who transforms into a sitting duck in front of fast bowlers in foreign conditions. His last sighting in India colours only drove home the point. In the Mumbai ODI against South Africa, Kagiso Rabada softened him up with a bouncer before uprooting his leg-stump from behind his legs even as Raina stood searching for the ball somewhere outside his off.
This is not to say that the promo had anything to do with Sandeep Patil & Co’s decision to give up on Raina in the 50-over format. It was almost like Indian cricket had had enough. For a decade now, selection committee after selection committee, coach after coach — from Greg Chappell calling him the ‘next Brian Lara’ to Gary Kirsten spending hours attempting to fix his short-ball issue — and MS Dhoni, in particular, have backed the Uttar Pradesh batsman, waiting for him to live up those lofty expectations.
Why it has taken the decision makers 223 ODIs to figure out that their long-term investment has hardly paid sufficient dividends is another story altogether. Only 11 others, by the way, have played more ODIs for the country than Raina — who has 5568 runs at 35.46 with 5 centuries — and those include the who’s who of Indian cricket. For the record, Harbhajan Singh has appeared in nine more than him while Dhoni himself has only played 44 matches more, in which he’s scored well over 3000 more runs despite batting at similar positions.
At times it’s felt like those selecting him and those backing him have been keener on Raina succeeding than the man himself. For, there’s no dearth of equations that the Indian team management has tried so that Raina could find a spot to cement himself in. But to no avail. Raina still seems to be in a state of self-discovery, more so now that the team management finally seems to have run out of positions left to put him into.
They’ve tried him as the anchor at No.3 — though Virat Kohli might have played a huge role in usurping that role from him — and as a steadying hand at No.5 and 6. Of late with India struggling to find a big-hitter at the back end of their batting line-up, Raina has been slated as the ‘finisher’ and he received a run at it against South Africa and earlier too. And when his batting has not fired, captains and selectors alike have pointed out at the ability to chip in with his innocuous off-spin as being a significant value addition that the team can do with. But his successes have been limited to flickers.
A letdown
Each time, it’s not the team management that has failed. If anything it is Raina who’s let them down. It’s understandable why you would want Raina in the shorter formats. There’s talent there for sure. And it has come through on occasions. India’s success in the 2011 World Cup had a lot to do with Raina’s match-winning cameo in the quarterfinal against Australia. Last year, it was a Raina century in Cardiff that set the foundation for a famous ODI series win in England after the Test team had been thrashed. There was also a breathtaking century in Auckland earlier this year against Zimbabwe from a precarious position to keep India’s unbeaten run going in the 2015 World Cup. And if nothing, Raina was among the first Indian batsmen to master the inside-out lofted shot over the covers, one that he used opulently while becoming the first Indian to score a T20 ton against South Africa in the 2010 edition of the World T20. For many, he still remains a fair option for ODIs in the subcontinent. But with averages lingering in the 20s when he’s been exposed to pitches in Australia and South Africa, it’s pretty obvious why he’s never quite gotten over the ‘bad tourist’ reputation.
His personality too may have had something to do with the incessantly long rope that has come his way since making his debut as a baby-faced prodigy in 2005. That is despite his overt attempts at being Mr Congeniality of the Indian team not having always gone down well back home, and even with some of his teammates, he still enjoys his fair share of fandom overseas. While in India he’s looked at as someone who might call a ‘pleaser’, he has his admirers even as far as in the Caribbean, where he remains, for many, their favourite Indian cricketer.
It’s easy to see why he would appeal to you as a neutral. He’s lively, he’s energetic and always giving his all on the field. For all his drawbacks with the bat, he has consistently remained one of India’s best fielders. He never shies away from any responsibility thrown at him, and seems to try and deliver it diligently. There’s also the affability quotient. Once during a nail-biting ODI contest at Sabina Park, Raina had run all the way from deep midwicket to the middle with birthday wishes for Kemar Roach. It was a gesture that broke the tension around Kingston for a brief moment as the crowd cheered and roared for Raina before going back to nibbling on their fingernails.
There has, also, never been a dearth of tongue-in-cheek remarks about his closeness to Dhoni, and how often that is cited as a reason for his intriguing longevity in the ODI team. And only a week after their long-standing partnership in the yellow of Chennai Super Kings was broken — with Dhoni being picked by Pune and Raina by Rajkot in the IPL draft — Patil & Co have ensured that Dhoni will have to do make do without his go-to man in the five-match series against Australia.
He will still make it Down Under for the three-match T20 series. But with the next major ICC ODI events — Champions Trophy in 2017 and World Cup in 2019 — still a fair way away, being dropped at this stage should worry the 29-year-old. With the selectors choosing to look long-term for options in ODIs, he might have to wait a while before even getting a look-in again, if that is to happen.
Waiting in the wings
It’s not that if his replacements, Manish Pandey for now, fail that the selectors necessarily will go back to Raina. There are plenty of younger names that they can choose from — Shreyas Iyer comes to mind— before they even consider looking back. An average of 13.75 in the Vijay Hazare Trophy for Uttar Pradesh leading to the selection committee meeting wasn’t quite the kind of returns Raina needed to win back the trust of the five wise men. It might be premature to cite the end of the ‘rope’ for him at this juncture, but the axing from the ODI squad is a sign that there might not be much length left on it anymore.
And yes, there will be bouncers when India land in Australia. But Raina will be fending them off from in front of his television and not on it, at least in the first half of the tour anyway.
