Suresh Raina has not had a bad international career. His troubles against the short ball have restricted his Test career but his 50-over and 20-over canvases are impressive enough.
Until he was dropped from Indiaâs one-day side this year in New Zealand, he was a regular feature of that format, eking out success in an unfashionable and unrewarding position down the batting order.
His international career, though, is far from over.
But it is probably a fair observation that he does not seem as complete, as formidable, in the blue of India as he does in the yellow of Chennai. When you see Raina in the Indian Premier League (IPL), you do not see Indiaâs Raina.
This one carries around him a sense of security and assuredness, an athlete comfortable with whatever gifts he has been given and the role in which he has to deploy them. Other batsmen have been more luminescent in the IPL, but few batsman have embodied it as much as Raina.
No other batsman has been so enhanced by the confidence the league gives, and at the same time been so lulled by the carelessness it allows to creep in.
Raina is comfortably a giant of the league and, in a transient environment, a mainstay. Chennaiâs opening match this season was his 100th IPL game, the first and only man to the mark. Only when Rohit Sharma walks out in opposition to him on Friday will he be joined by another to that landmark. Only Gautam Gambhir has more fifties than him and, given their recent paths, it will be no surprise if Raina has overtaken him before the season is out.
He is also a two-time league winner and as much the on-field face of Chennai as captain MS Dhoni and coach Stephen Fleming.
This is the time of the year when Raina does nothing wrong.
That thought was supported in Rainaâs performance as Chennai got their season off to a strong start. His 56 was what is expected of him: a critical but somehow unobtrusive innings.
His smart sense of placement took advantage of a vast outfield to run seven twos. When he needed to, he found the boundary, mixing newer, Twenty20 strokes with older, orthodox ones. Overall was the unmistakable impression that he bats lighter, with lesser burden, for Chennai than he does for India.
That he bats at three for his IPL team, a position generally assigned to the best batsman, probably helps. It is where, he said, he feels comfortable.
âI bat No 3 here and if you look at my ODI record [for India] I bat five, six, or seven,â he said. âI have a freedom to bat in Twenty20. I know I can go after six overs and still have 14 overs.
âThat is the strength of my batting here over the last six or seven years. I just go there and look to be solid at the start and then I can play my strokes later on.
âAt Chennai, my role is really simple. I just work really hard with Fleming and the other coaches, so I can play my natural game.â
If the implication is that the configuration when playing for India has not been right, then he did nothing to play that down. He was realistic though; replacing Virat Kohli is not going to happen. That, effectively, is a fact of Rainaâs life.
Moreâs the pity that when he got a chance to bat the highest he could â at No 4 in ODIs against Australia last October â he failed.
If ever there was a series in which not to fail as a batsman, it was that one, marked by a power batting hyperactivity unseen in the game.
âVirat has done really well there so I donât think I can bat there. I got the chance against Australia and I didnât do well in four games. I would love to bat up the order but still, whatever the coach and captain give me, I go out there to win matches for India,â Raina said, with a certain resignation in his voice.
That was not surprising but at least he has a starring role for the IPLâs most dominant franchise as a good way to get over it.
osamiuddin@thenational.ae
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