SURESH RAINA BIOGRAPHY

SURESH RAINA BIOGRAPHY 

Suresh Raina is a retired Indian international cricketer born on 27th November 1986. He also served as a stand-in captain for the Indian national cricket squad now and then. Raina is an aggressive left-handed batsman and also bowls as an off-spinner occasionally. He holds a record of scoring a century in all three international cricket formats, and he's the first Indian cricketer to do so.

In addition, Raina has been one of the youngest players ever to serve as the Indian international cricket team captain. He started his cricket career by playing in the domestic cricket circuit for the Uttar Pradesh cricket team.

He's been very active in the Indian Premier League. Moreover, Suresh Raina also served as the captain for the Gujarat Lions team and vice-captain for the Chennai Super Kings before he retired from IPL. He announced his retirement from International Cricket on 15th August 2020.

Life Before Cricket

Suresh Raina was born in a Kashmiri pandit family in Muradnagar, Uttar Pradesh. His parents are from Rainawari, Srinagar district of Jammu and Kashmir. Suresh Raina lives in the neighborhood of Rajnagar in Ghaziabad city. All his schooling is done in a boarding school.

Personal Life

Suresh Raina's father's name is Trilokchand Raina, and his mother's name is Parvesh Raina. His father has served in the Indian Army; he was a military officer in an ordinance factory. Raina's family belongs to 'Rainawari' in Jammu and Kashmir. However, Raina's family settled in Muradnagar town, Ghaziabad district, Uttar Pradesh, in the late 1990s after the departure of Kashmiri Hindus.

Suresh Raina also has two siblings, a sister, and an elder brother. His elder brother, Dinesh Raina, serves in the Indian Army. Suresh Raina is an alumnus of the Guru Gobind Singh sports college, 1998, Lucknow.

Raina's uncle Ashok Kumar was brutally assaulted by the robbers during a robbery in their house in Punjab. Unfortunately, the assault was fatal, resulting in the death of his uncle. So immediately after the incident, he withdrew himself from playing in the Indian Premier League 2020 and decided to be with his family during this hard time.

Raina has been happily married to Priyanka since 3rd April 2015 and is also blessed with a daughter and a son.

Style of Play

Suresh Raina is a middle-order left-handed batsman with an aggressive attitude towards his batting style. Due to his aggressive batting style, he has seen success in all formats of cricket other than test cricket. Suresh Raina occasionally bowls as an off-break bowler.

Throughout his career, the teams he played against always tried to take advantage of his weakness of short balls. He faced a lot of criticism for his weakness of short-pitched balls. He also struggled greatly because of this drawback, even in the Ranji Trophy domestic cricket. He scored most of the runs in his career in the mid-wicket on-side area, and most of the time, he's seen playing inside-out off-drive shots. He is fantastic at hitting the ball offside as he creates room for himself.

Journey Till World Cup

Suresh Raina has not been an active player and has been on the bench for the first few months of 2011. Initially, Raina was not in the right form to secure a place in the team, so instead, the captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni opted for Yousuf Patan in place of Suresh Raina. Later Virender Sehwag was badly injured, so he got replaced with Raina, who consistently performed against West Indies.

Seeing Raina's performance Dhoni, the team captain, devised a new strategy and opted for Suresh Raina in place of Yusuf Patan in the quarter-final against the defending champion team Australia. So, Raina played a vital role; he scored thirty-four runs off twenty-eight balls and gave Yuvraj Singh an enduring partnership. This eventually led India to win the quarter-finals of the world cup. Furthermore, his performance was phenomenal in the semi-final match against Pakistan. He coordinated with the tailenders to reach the final score of two hundred and sixty runs with a contribution of thirty-six runs.

In the semi-final match, he played a crucial role by taking Younis Khan's catch off of Yuvraj Singh's bowling. This helped the team India win the ICC World Cup 2011. 'Raina won the world cup for us with some crucial knocks' is the statement passed by the coach Gary Kirsten about Raina.

India later toured West Indies after World Cup. Captain MS Dhoni was at rest while Vice-Captain Virender Sehwag was injured, making Gautam Gambhir the captain for the ODI and T20 with Suresh Raina as his deputy captain. Then Gambhir was knocked out of the tournament because of an injury making Suresh Raina the team's captain while Harbhajan Singh was his deputy. Suresh Raina had an average of 16.4 in the ODI series and 46.4 in tests. The former cricket legends highly appraised his captaincy.