Raina and the short ball

[cowboysfan]

I have to say i am quite dissapointed in the way he plays the short ball,one of the most awkward looking position to play the pull short.Bowlers are continuing to bowl short to him and he still hasnt got the hang of it.I dont think he will be in the reckoning in the test side anytime soon.

[Andy]

The biggest pain is dat..he is getting out to half trackers dan the effort ball!! I hope u understand wat i mean!!

[Karan114]

Yeah, he just hasn't improved despite bowlers targeting him this way for quite some time now. Even on flat pitches it is a struggle for him.

[S.Bond]

I have to say i am quite dissapointed in the way he plays the short ball' date='one of the most awkward looking position to play the pull short.Bowlers are continuing to bowl short to him and he still hasnt got the hang of it.I dont think he will be in the reckoning in the test side anytime soon.[/quote'] hmmmm agree with u, but i have a batsman that looks 100 times more akward than raina while playing the pull shot, Shaoib malik hahahahahaha, that's ridiculous.... But yeah raina will have to improve if he wants to play test cricket, especially with other good batsman like murli vijay, badrinath, pujara,rahane, sharma waiting...

[zubinpepsi]

its disappointing.. I thought he would have learnt aafter T20 WC.. I was hoping he wud have improved since gary is the coach.. but im still hopeful.. he ll come good..

[vvvslaxman]

Look how his bat position when he plays pull or hook. It is supposed to be horizontal . Face of the bat should be perpendicular to square leg boundary. But in Raina's case it is parallel. When the ball doesn't bounce much it works. But when it bounces he has to play horizontally. I don't think any Indian player is as worse as Raina when it comes to playing shots of short stuff. Even the likes of Karthik, Rohit, Kohli are much better pullers.

[deep82]

Raina under pressure has just one stroke- big heave over midwicket. I am quite frustrated with him because he actually has wide range of strokes but prefer ugly heave from time to time...

[cowboysfan]

Raina under pressure has just one stroke- big heave over midwicket. I am quite frustrated with him because he actually has wide range of strokes but prefer ugly heave from time to time...

welcome to ICF.

[deep82]

welcome to ICF.

Thanks bro. I am still feeling through and reading threads.

[Gambit]

Raina thinks he can counter the short ball by pulling or hooking despite them not coming naturally to him. He has to go something similar to SRW or play an SRT shot. Let it hit him or play the upper cut.

[Sooda]

Didnt he work on this with Dravid and others in the off season? Clearly hasnt helped

[fineleg]

Sourav Ganguly was uncertain against short pitch bowling always. However, in the latter part of his career he developed ways to cope with it - at least to the extent that it minimized the problems somewhat. Still awkward and clumsy, but he was better at it. That is what Raina must strive to achieve (at the very least). Only then he can feature regularly in ODI and perhaps even think of Test matches later on. Right now, the way Raina tackles short pitch bowling, even on innocuous Indian pitches - one has to say even Harbhajan Singh tackles it better :D

[Sachinism]

^^ Did Ganguly tackle it by having someone serve wet tennis balls at him?

[jusarrived]

Ganguly never worked out a way to play bouncers , only that he would some how get out of way rather than playing a shot ..while raina can easily choose to do that , hes still trying make it a scoring area , which i dont see as such a bad thing as hes still pretty young .

[Andy]

Ganguly never worked out a way to play bouncers ' date=' only that he would some how get out of way rather than playing a shot ..while raina can easily choose to do that , hes still trying make it a scoring area , which i dont see as such a bad thing as hes still pretty young .[/quote'] Ganguly still made 10k runs wid dat!! I have seen him pull few times the short balls!! But they were all pre decided!! Even if Raina can do dat..he will do well for the team!!

[vvvslaxman]

Ganguly still made 10k runs wid dat!! I have seen him pull few times the short balls!! But they were all pre decided!! Even if Raina can do dat..he will do well for the team!!

Yes in later stages he started pulling well. He was comfortable when the ball came at a certain height. Difference is Ganguly's first aim was to get on top of the bounce. Infact all good players of hook or pull would try to get on top of the ball. In Raina's case he tries to get under the ball. That is the difference.

[Sachinism]

Ganguly never worked out a way to play bouncers ' date=' only that he would some how get out of way rather than playing a shot ..while raina can easily choose to do that , hes still trying make it a scoring area , which i dont see as such a bad thing as hes still pretty young .[/quote'] I've seen Ganguly score PLENTY of runs against the short. He may look awkward, but he wasn't as bad as it has been made out to be

[Andy]

I've seen Ganguly score PLENTY of runs against the short. He may look awkward' date=' but he wasn't as bad as it has been made out to be[/quote'] Ganguly is rated not very highly as a batsman..due to failures frm 2000 to 2005[in test cricket] in the middle of his career[Particularly during captaincy stint] But he was very gud as a batsman in test cricket in his first and last 3 years!! Even wid dat failure he managed to score so many runs people tend to overlook dat!! If dis raina manages to become a ganguly India will be more dan served!!

[diegovegaz]

he has not been getting much chance to bat he comes low down, and has to go hitting very early maybe he doesn't get set, and that's why he isn't getting it right

[Sachinism]

he has not been getting much chance to bat he comes low down, and has to go hitting very early maybe he doesn't get set, and that's why he isn't getting it right

Thats true as well. Even if he is penciled to come in early, he'll get pushed back if wickets fall early, so he could be utilized in the death overs