IND vs ENG, 2018: Sanjay Bangar Reveals Why Suresh Raina is Preferred Ahead of Dinesh Karthik

The team management’s decision to prefer southpaw Suresh Raina ahead of wicketkeeper-batsman Dinesh Karthik for the ongoing One-day Internationals against England has raised a lot of eyebrows and the reasons behind it have to be very quite obvious.

Raina was not even a part of the ODI squad. The experienced campaigner was drafted in the team only after Ambati Rayudu failed to clear the mandatory Yo-Yo test.

Not surprisingly, there were speculations that Karthik would get the chance ahead of him. Moreover, Karthik has been in good form for quite some time now.

Karthik has been in stunning form since the Nidahas Trophy held in Sri Lanka earlier this year. In the final, he had slammed 29 off just eight balls – to guide India to a thrilling win over Bangladesh.

The right-hander followed it up with a stunning show in the eleventh edition of the Indian Premier League (IPL). He finished the season with 498 runs at an average of almost 50 and a strike-rate of over 147.

On the other hand, Raina scored 445 runs in the IPL and had last played an ODI way back in October 2015 against South Africa before he was dropped after a string of poor performances.

However, the management surprisingly picked him up for the first two ODIs against England.

And the criticism found its way when the left-handed batter struggled to get going in the second game. Despite being dropped twice, he managed 46 off 63 balls.

Not surprisingly, India batting coach Sanjay Bangar was asked about the reason as to why Suresh Raina was preferred ahead of Karthik when he came out to address the media ahead of the third ODI.

In reply, Bangar said, “The plan was to have a left-hander batting in the middle-order. And that is the reason why Suresh was picked ahead of Dinesh.”

Bangar also asserted that the team would continue to shuffle the middle-order in order to find the right combination.

“We did change a bit certainly in the T20 format where KL played at three and Virat batted at four. But looking at the series and the performances that Virat has got at number three especially in the last series where he scored three hundreds against South Africa in five games,” he pointed.

“But going forward, we are looking in terms of games remaining wherein we could look at settling the middle order slots. Things are pretty fluid at the moment. It is not that the guys only want to bat at a particular number. It’s going to be a very very fluid situation,” he said.