Former Indian cricketer Suresh Raina didn’t agree with the way Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) captain Faf du Plessis indirectly criticized Mayank Dagar’s over after their defeat to the Rajasthan Royals (RR) earlier in IPL 2024 as well. However, a Jos Buttler hundred sealed the deal for his side as well.
After the game, Faf du Plessis told the host broadcaster that the over changed the momentum of the chase as well. And, speaking to The Lallantop, Suresh Raina said, “If you speak something like this about a junior in front of the press, it’s not right. The captain himself hasn’t been scoring runs. I’ve played with Faf for many years and he’s a dear friend, but he should support the youngsters. You’d never see Rohit Sharma say something like this.”
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Raina said that Du Plessis shouldn’t have said that in the open. While he had a bad start to IPL 2024 with the bat, a couple of
fifties he has scored so far. Meanwhile, in 2020, Suresh Raina Academy had combined with the J&K Sport Council to have trials in Jammu & Kashmir as well.
“I wanted to open my first academy in Jammu and Kashmir because I know that there are many talented kids there. A lot of talent has come from there in domestic cricket, international cricket, and in the IPL. They are very passionate. The kids have bat and ball on the right side and AK47 on the left side. The easy option for them was the left one; there have been stone-throwing incidents as well. However, I wanted them to choose bat and ball,” said Raina.
However, Suresh Raina shared the dressing room with Gautam Gambhir many times when they were active India cricketers and recently shared a hilarious story about him. Raina said that Gambhir had the habit of listening to a song too many times if it helped him in scoring runs as well. And many got irritated with this.
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He said, “He can listen to one song 20 times in the dressing room. If he likes the song, he will score runs. However, some other batters would get out after listening to that song. Many times three-four players have gone to him and said, ‘Hata Gauti is gaane ko’.”
“He (Rinku) is God-gifted. Whenever the Indian team win the World Cup, the winning six will come from Rinku Singh’s bat. He is that kind of a player who will bail the team out of trouble,” Suresh Raina concluded. “He (Shubman) is very strong from the heart. Now that he is leading GT, he is going to be a superstar in the coming years. I would say he would say he will be the next Indian captain. He reads the game very well. He has the body language that we’ve seen with Sourav Ganguly and Mohammad Azharuddin in the past.”
