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IPL 2016: When one door shuts, another opens for Suresh Raina

While his India future looks uncertain, Suresh Raina has an opportunity to lead Gujarat Lions to title in their maiden IPL season.

rcb vs gl, bangalore vs gujarat, gl vs rcb, gujarat vs bangalore, suresh raina, raina, india cricket team, ipl 2016 qualifier, ipl qualifer, cricket news, cricket Suresh Raina hit back-to-back half centuries in the last two games to help Gujarat Lions top the points table. (Source: File)

SPARE A thought for Suresh Raina. A day before he is to lead his IPL franchise into their biggest match yet, he finds out his international career is now left in limbo.

Well, not many, including maybe even Raina, would have realistically expected him to make the Test squad for the Caribbean. But with all the senior players except MS Dhoni being rested for the limited-overs trip to Zimbabwe, this ideally should have been the perfect opportunity to give the seasoned left-hander another shot at proving his credentials at the big stage. Unless of course, the selectors have given up on him.

Yes, you could argue that there’s not much that Raina could show Sandeep Patil & Co that they don’t already know. And it seems obvious that they are very keen on giving the relatively newer faces a go in Zimbabwe.

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“No one has been rested. No one wrote to BCCI or called us (to say) they were not available or they should be rested. It was the decision of the selection committee to pick a young side for Zimbabwe and another side for West Indies,” selection panel head Sandeep Patil told reporters.

Raina just recently became a father of a baby girl, and this is perhaps one break he won’t complain about. But ‘rested’ doesn’t quite sit as comfortably with Raina as it does with, say, Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma.

Festive offer

The 29-year-old last played an ODI in October — the Wankhede mauling meted out by South Africa — and was left out of India’s 50-over squad Down Under at the start of the year. He did, however, make it to the T20 squad in Australia and also was an integral part of India’s World T20 campaign subsequently.

While Patil did go on to mention the injury status of some of the other members of that World T20 party — Kohli and Ashish Nehra especially — not many seemed to take much notice of Raina’s omission. With India not slated to play too many limited-overs matches over the next 10 months, you wonder whether it’s the end of the road for Raina in India colours, at least for the near future.

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He could bury that disappointment with the guaranteed two matches he’s left to play in the IPL. For, that’s the best he can do.

At home in the IPL

Regardless of his form elsewhere, it’s generally during the IPL that Raina dives right back into the public consciousness. To his credit, he’s been at his routinely influential best for his new team with the bat even though his incredible run of consecutive matches came to an end when he took a day off for paternity leave.

Raina’s been the Lions’ top run-getter and he’s celebrated his fatherhood with two match-winning half-centuries — the first of those kind of setting right a mid-campaign crisis and the second ensuring that Gujarat were the first franchise to qualify for the playoffs. And if he were able to take his team all the way and make the Lions the first team since Rajasthan Royals in 2008 to win an IPL crown in their debut season, Raina will have the perfect antidote to deal with the Indian selectors’ snub.

To be honest, Raina’s been the glue of a highly destructive yet volatile Lions top-order much like his counterpart on Tuesday at the Chinnaswamy Stadium, Kohli, has been for the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB). Such has been the exceptional dominance of the RCB skipper, though, that it’s unfair to even taking anyone else’s name in the same breath as him in IPL 9.

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But Raina has played an equally crucial role to maintain sanity in the midst of all the mayhem around him-even if at times he’s contributed partly to it.

While jaws start hitting the floor every time Kohli’s statistics in run-chases come up on screen, Raina has a decent record of his own when his team has achieved targets — like in the last two league games. But each of the megapowers that man the batting line-up around the two captains in both teams have the ability to turn and win matches on their own. The long and short of it is that either one of Chris Gayle or Brendon McCullum could just show up and smash their respective team into the final on their own. If not, there’s always an AB de Villiers or a Dwayne Smith to do the same, not to forget the two burly bulldozers from Down Under — Shane Watson and Aaron Finch.

Not quite the poster boys

Having said that, KL Rahul and Dinesh Karthik have played the unglamorous roles when it comes to backing up the starcast of their respective teams. Karthik has been the more sedate of the two but the last month-and-a-half have witnessed the coming of age of Rahul in the shortest format. His strike-rate of 147.89 is marginally lower than Kohli’s and better than Gayle’s — managing to give his team the impetus with some powerful strikes, which to the connoisseurs’ delight have been right out of the MCC syllabus. No surprises then that the selectors have given Rahul, who averages 55.14, the nod as opener for Zimbabwe.

Ball in the Lions’ lair

Tuesday’s clash will be a contest between a team that peaked early, hit a trough, and then got its bearings back right in time and another who languished at the bottom for three quarters of the league stages before marauding its way to the top.

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For all the parities you draw between the two sides, Gujarat do hold the edge with the ball-though it comes to nought when Kohli’s on strike. In Praveen Kumar and Dhawal Kulkarni, they have the most effective new-ball bowlers in the IPL. While Kulkarni has the wickets to show for it-14 at 22.71-Kumar has been the real menace at the start, rarely allowing the opposition to breathe easy in the powerplay. Then as the ball gets scuffed up, they have the irrepressible Dwayne Bravo with his wily changes of pace, and in the last two games this trio has been responsible for turning the match around in the last five overs with their unerring use of the yorker and clever pace variations. Bravo has also used the angles. RCB though will argue that they scored 112 in the last five when the two teams last met at the same venue 10 days back.

Having said that, Bangalore’s bowling-though still their bugbear-has improved as the season’s gone on. They also have more wicket-taking options in their spin department, including the most successful bowler of IPL 9, Yuzvendra Chahal, whose 19 wickets have won him a ticket to Zimbabwe too. His clever use of flight and drift could well act as bait for Gujarat’s gung-ho batting line-up and make the difference at a ground where he’s mastered the art of taking wickets despite the lack of assistance on offer.

Get latest updates on IPL 2024 from IPL Points Table to Teams, Schedule, Most Runs and Most Wickets along with live score updates for all matches. Also get Sports news and more cricket updates.

First uploaded on: 24-05-2016 at 01:14 IST
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