Switching from white ball to red ball cannot be done overnight, feels Suresh Raina
Suresh Raina scored a century on his Test debut
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Suresh Raina has opined that it requires at least a couple of weeks of practice to curb the white-ball instincts and do better in red-ball matches. Raina further added that he probably struggled to find that balance which eventually resulted in his ousting after the 2014 tour Down Under.
A champion performer in the IPL, a three-time IPL champion and a World Cup winner - when it comes to white-ball format, Suresh Raina was an unquestioned champion cricketer in white-ball formats of the game. However, his Test career was cut short partly due to his inability to work on leaving the delivery outside off-stump and partly due to his struggle against short-pitched deliveries.
Under MS Dhoni’s reign, he had multiple call-ups to the Test side, but once Dhoni announced his retirement from the format in 2014, the Virat Kohli-led side moved away from him for good. Raina, however, has no grudge against anyone for the same and stated that he plotted his own downfall.
"Switching from white ball to red ball cannot be done overnight. You should take at least a couple of weeks practising leaving the ball; know where your fourth stump is. Perhaps I couldn't understand that balance. I did well in the West Indies but was dismissed a lot against off-spinners, bouncers troubled me a few times too. So then I got engrossed in too much ODI cricket and didn't get enough chances in Tests," Raina told Aakash Chopra on the latter’s show 'AakashVani', reported Times of India.
The first Indian player to score a century in all three formats of the game, Raina’s Test debut was exactly the opposite of his ODI one. He walked away with a duck on his ODI debut, but made up for it in Sri Lanka during his first Test, scoring a memorable 120 and forged a solid 256-run partnership with Sachin Tendulkar on a belter of a wicket. Raina recalled that game and stated that he was sleepless the night before his debut after getting a call from Yuvraj.
"Yuvi paa (Yuvraj Singh) had called me up the night before the Test match and said, 'I'm unwell, you be prepared'. He said 'chances are there that you'll play'. He probably had a stomach bug or a food infection, so he didn't play," Raina said.
"I couldn't sleep the entire night because it was so hot in Sri Lanka. They had some big names in their team and it was going to be my Test debut. Luckily we lost the toss and we had to field. So I observed the first two days and when my batting came I was ready. If we had batted (first), then probably I would've got a duck-like my ODI debut," he added.
