Former Indian batter Suresh Raina, who announced his international retirement in August 2020, has revealed that there was not enough communication between him and the team management during the final days of his international career.
Raina, who played 226 ODIs, 78 T20Is and 18 Tests for India, retired at the age of only 33. Speaking to former Indian cricketer Aakash Chopra on YouTube, Raina revealed that he passed the yo-yo fitness test and also scored runs in domestic cricket, only to be left out without any proper communication.
“See, every captain has his own team. He obviously feels someone else is better. Yuvraj Singh and I failed the Yo-Yo test, but we cleared it. We played a lot of domestic too. Scored a lot of runs. I did speak to Anil bhai (then the coach), and he told me there were certain things I needed to do,” Raina said on Aakash Chopra’s YouTube channel.
“I was named Player of the Tournament in South Africa in T20Is. But in the 2019 World Cup, a different batter was preferred for England. A different keeper went there too. Back then, I felt that I could have done better,” he added.
Further, the former CSK batter asserted that players expect respect and basic clarity from the selection committee. He went on to add that while he asked too many questions, he couldn’t get a proper response from the other end.
“Players expect respect. The communication could have been better, such as what are the selectors thinking? What message is being given to them by them? But that’s not in our control. I asked plenty of questions, but didn’t get any answers. I spoke to both the captain and the coaches. But they did what they felt was right,” said Raina.
