Indian Premier League (IPL) side Chennai Super Kings’ (CSK) batting maestro Suresh Raina has heaped praise on his former CSK teammate Ravichandran Ashwin for his quality bowling in the powerplay overs.
Raina, who has played 193 matches for CSK for 5,368 runs so far becoming the second-highest run-getter only behind Virat Kohli in the history of the IPL, further claimed that the CSK skipper MS Dhoni believed in Ashwin because of his ability to take wickets in the opening overs of a match.
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The off-spinner began his IPL career with CSK in 2009 and played a crucial role in the franchise’s successful run in the premier T20 tournament until 2016, winning two IPL titles in 2010 and 2011. Later, he moved to Rising Pune Supergiants (RPS) when CSK was banned for the 2016 and 2017 season and has never returned to the CSK set-up ever since.
In the 2018 season which was won by CSK for the third time, Ashwin played for Kings XI Punjab and then captained the side in the last two seasons. He was due to play for Delhi Capitals in the postponed IPL 2020.
During an Instagram Live session with Ashwin, Raina said: “If you see your powerplay bowling average, it has always been below six, you have always provided us with breakthroughs that’s why MS believed in you.”
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Meanwhile, Raina also revealed he always warned his team to be watchful when Ashwin – who is known for troubling world-class batsmen with the carrom ball, played for the opposition.
He added, “When you played for Pune and Punjab, I told my team to be careful against you as you had good carrom balls and they always used to trouble the batsmen,”
(With ANI Inputs)
