With age working against him, Suresh Raina may find it difficult to make an unexpected comeback this year if he misses out on the IPL.
Raina has now gone unsold at an IPL auction for the first time in his career. Since the competition’s inception in 2008, he has only missed two IPL seasons.
Raina is the fourth best run-getter in IPL history (5,528 runs), after only Virat Kohli, Shikhar Dhawan, and Rohit Sharma.
With age working against him, Raina may find it difficult to make an unlikely comeback this year if he misses out on the IPL.
After returning home, he also missed the IPL 2020 season owing to personal issues. Raina had accompanied the team to Dubai, but a day after numerous CSK players tested positive for Covid-19, CSK CEO KS Viswanathan announced, “Suresh Raina has returned to India for personal reasons and will be unavailable for the rest of the IPL season.” Suresh and his family have the full support of the Chennai Super Kings at this difficult period.”
In 2021, he returned to CSK but had a disappointing season, scoring only 160 runs at an average of 17.77. He has, however, had a fantastic IPL career with CSK, hitting 5,528 runs at 32.51 with a strike rate of 136.76. He also has a century and 39 half-centuries to his name.