Suresh Raina’s short bowling woes continue to plague him

For Suresh Raina, the short ball is like an angry ex; it refuses to leave him alone and a meeting with it almost always results in something nasty for him. A lot has been written about Raina’s struggles with the short delivery and how he has regularly failed to cope with it and even after more than a decade in international cricket, things haven’t changed much it seems.

In the current IPL, one could see Raina continuously falling to the short delivery – even the innocuous ones at times. Even in the World T20 and the Asia Cup preceding the IPL, Raina fell to the short delivery a few times; his timid dismissal in the all important match versus Australia in the World T20 lingers fresh. This after Raina had claimed repeatedly a couple of years back that he had worked intensively on this short-ball problem and taken the help of former Indian star batsman Sourav Ganguly to overcome it. Ganguly, who himself had been afflicted with the short ball syndrome, had apparently worked with Raina to iron out his flaws.

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Unfortunately, it seems that Raina is far from conquering his problem and is still struggling badly with it. In fact, it is making him a liability at times for his team. This doesn’t bode well for an international player who has been in the business for over a decade now. This is the reason that Raina is never seen as a complete cricketer and hence has not been able to make his mark in the longest form of the game. His continuous struggles with the short ball has not allowed him to perform well overseas and, despite his impressive talent, he has not been able to achieve the greatness that he could have.

Where exactly is Raina going wrong?

Raina’s tribulations with the short ball are a mix of both technical and mental.

While facing the short delivery, one can clearly see that he is always uncomfortable; he generally closes his eyes while playing it, never really gets behind the ball and often attempts to hit it too hard. All of this predominantly results in him getting out.

More than all this, though, what really doesn’t help Raina’s cause is that he seems to be always thinking about the short delivery while batting. He knows that bowlers have worked out his weakness and hence is always expecting them to bowl the short ball at him; his batting stance these days is quite indicative of that. Yes, the bowlers do tend to overdo the short ball stuff at Raina sometimes. But the thing is that he appears to be so preoccupied on how to face the short deliveries coming his way that he often misses out on the harmless deliveries or even ends up getting out to them.

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The way ahead?

In this day and age, a batsman having a weakness can easily be worked out by bowlers everywhere. It is impossible to hide one’s flaws. Needless to say, Raina needs to sort out his short ball woes if he harbors hopes of still having a long and successful international career. This flaw of his makes him a less effective batsman and gives bowlers an immediate advantage whenever he is on the crease; especially if the pitch is aiding the faster bowlers. And there is no way that he would be able to survive for long durations in Tests in the seaming wickets of England, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. In fact, he can be an outright liability in Test matches or even in ODIs having seamer friendly wickets. That, clearly, is a major drawback then.

The thing is, every batsman – even the best in the world – has one weakness or the other. Virat Kohli has struggled with the ball swinging away outside the off-stump. A classy batsman like Cheteshwar Pujara too has been having issues with the ball coming in. Cricket history is replete with countless other similar cases. But a true champion is one who manages to clearly realize his defect and works hard to iron it out or at least works on it in a way that it doesn’t become an overwhelming flaw. Virat is one fine example of that.

At 29 years of age Suresh Raina still has sufficient time on his hand. What he needs is some clarity of thought on how to tackle his short ball conundrum and not let it overcome him. Every batsman has his way of dealing with a particular delivery, Raina should find his own. Whichever way suits him, he should work on that. Even Sourav Ganguly, who has scored more than 10,000 runs in ODIs, had a long struggle with the short delivery. But he eventually found a way to manage it and even began scoring runs off it. It wasn’t always pleasing to the eyes – quite unlike his caressing cover drives – but he did make the best of the situation. That is something Raina could definitely learn from.

He has been a real match-winner all his life. He is a gifted and passionate cricketer and has a lot to offer to the team. This one shortcoming of his is hindering his path to being a complete cricketer. One genuinely hopes then that Raina can soon find a solution to his short ball woes. The sport needs fiery cricketers like him in full flow to make it complete.