Suresh Raina hopes to revive form

“It’s good three quality global games”.

Indian Cricketer Suresh Raina made his debut in 2006 at the age of 20. He was “rested” for the ODI series against Zimbabwe and expectedly didn’t find his name in the touring party for the three-Test series against Sri Lanka.

Raina’s wariness comes after MS Dhoni’s men suffered a shocking 2-1 loss in Bangladesh in June this year. He is learning to play the saxophone, tried his hand at play-back singing in Bollywood and enjoyed a European vacation with his wife.

Raina’s last global assignment was the Bangladesh tour and the southpaw pointed out the need to play games ahead of the home series against South Africa, starting October 3.

Raina wants to take one match at a time and at the moment he is not thinking about the upcoming marathons series against South Africa. It’s good that I’m playing here.

“I can’t really say that this “A” series will give us good practice matches because we (senior team) have lost a series to Bangladesh recently”. India A has players who have played for India – Kedar (Jadhav), Manish Pandey and Kuldeep (Yadav).

Speaking about working with Dravid, Raina said, “I worked hard when (Rahul) Dravid was the captain”.

After a two-month break that included intense training in Amsterdam, India batsman Suresh Raina is excited to play under coach Rahul Dravid in the forthoming three unofficial ODIs against Bangladesh A.

“In the conversations I have had with the selectors, I understood that they do see these 15 or 20 people as the core group of players, both in the one-day and the four-day format”. He was very very solid with the youngsters – especially me, Robin Uthappa, Irfan Pathan and lot of other others who came into the team.