Twitter spits venom after CSK stand-in skipper Suresh Raina fails to impress with bat
Raina could only score a couple of runs against Rohit Sharma and Co.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) 2019 has been statistically significant for Suresh Raina. The Chennai Super Kings (CSK) batsman, who has led in a few games in the absence of MS Dhoni, completed 5,000 runs in the tournament as the first batsman. The 32-year-old is now on the cusp of another milestone as he currently has 99 catches in the IPL and one more will also make him the first to have a century of catches in his kitty.
However, despite these milestones, Raina has failed to impress the fans in the IPL, thanks to an ordinary batting form. Just 12 matches short of 200 in the IPL, Raina is having the worst season this year. The southpaw has scored 247 runs from 12 matches in IPL 2012 at an average of 22.45 and strike-rate of 120. His lowest tally of runs in an IPL is 374 which he gathered in 2015 at an average of around 25.
He has scored only one fifty this year (he had only one half-century in the 2012 IPL), which has been a below-par statement from the tournament’s one of the most prolific batsmen. Raina also lost his top spot in the scorers’ list to Royal Challengers Bangalore’s (RCB) captain Virat Kohli who also completed 5k runs this year.
Raina failed to deliver when the team needed him
Raina has failed to deliver in both the matches he has led the CSK this season. While he failed to accelerate in the game against Sunrisers Hyderabad (SRH), scoring 13 off 13 before falling to ace spinner Rashid Khan, he fell for just two in four balls in the game against Mumbai Indians (MI) in Chennai on Friday.
The team had hoped him to play an influential role in the absence of senior players like Dhoni and Ravindra Jadeja in the game but he failed to rise to the occasion, falling to an aimless strike off Hardik Pandya only to be caught by Suryakumar Yadav inside the circle. Strong reactions poured in over Raina’s poor form in IPL 2019 on social media and here are some of them:
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