The 39-year-old revealed that he had asked tough questions of the then head coach, Anil Kumble , and captain, Virat Kohli , but never received a concrete response from either of them. Raina retired from international cricket in 2020 at the age of 33 after being left out of India’s squad for the 2019 ODI World Cup in England. Former India batter Suresh Raina has opened up about his exile from the team, which eventually forced him into early retirement. The southpaw also recalled that he had initially failed the Yo-Yo Test but was not recalled to the side even after clearing it later.
“Then came the 2019 World Cup in England, where preference was given to a different batter. Because as you can see, everything kept changing after that. Because someone experienced was needed there since both of us had played together for so long, at that time, I felt I could have done better, maybe Yuvi pa could have done better….
After that, we cleared it as well, played a lot of domestic cricket, scored a lot of runs too,” Raina told former India batter Aakash Chopra during a candid chat. We became the fittest team at that time, whatever we were told, we passed it too, so why weren’t we selected after that? Even back then we used to do a different Yo-Yo when Gary [Kirsten] used to conduct it… we passed that, only then were we in the team,” Raina said.
“No, every captain has his own team, right… as you can see. When someone else became captain, he felt this player is better, that player is better. People like us, when I and Yuvi pa [ Yuvraj Singh ] were there, we failed the Yo-Yo test too. “I asked questions, I didn’t get answers. So I asked questions, talked to people… captain and coaches. Raina, however, admitted that he could have done some things differently that might have convinced the management to keep him in the team, but insisted that he has no regrets about it. A different wicketkeeper went there. But every captain has a different role, all those things were different. But alright, there’s no point talking about all that now,” he added. Raina also hinted that his knee injury may have been cited as a reason for his omission from the team. “But it does make a lot of difference, definitely. Or were you just looking for a reason?
