Out of favour India batsman Suresh Raina is all set to share the dressing room with his mentor and beloved captain MS Dhoni in the next edition of Indian Premier League (IPL) for the returning franchise Chennai Super Kings (CSK). Earlier this month, the duo were retained by CSK during the IPL retention.
Ahead of the IPL auction, scheduled to be held in Bangalore on January 27 and 28, Raina has termed Dhoni as a calmer and go-to-guy. The southpaw also hailed the legendary India wicketkeeper as a great human being.
"I respect Dhoni as he is a good human being. Moreover, he is a calmer and a go-to-guy," Raina was quoted by Business World as saying.
Statics also seem to back Raina’s remarks since the Jharkhand man happens to be the only captain in the history of cricket to have won three different ICC trophies besides leading Chennai Super Kings to two IPL triumphs.
Raina, who was retained by the CSK franchise for a whopping Rs. 11 crore, has been appointed as the deputy of MS Dhoni in IPL 2018. In the last two seasons of IPL, Raina led the dysfunctional Gujarat Lions side while Dhoni played for Rising Pune Supergiants as a captain as well as player.
Earlier, Raina had said that he is ecstatic with the prospect of sharing the dressing room with Dhoni and is also excited to don the yellow jersey once again.
“Overall in the past eight years if you see, the most important thing about CSK is that we play as a team. And playing with MS I think it's always good to go back in your own den and you know everything so well...From the administration to coaching to the doctors to trainers. The amount of love we got from CSK was tremendous and I think they have a very good crowd, we played so many matches there, we played so many finals there, we have also lost finals there but love from the crowd is still the same,” Raina had said in an interview with India Today.
“I've become a matured player there. I've worked with Stephen Fleming, Kepler Wessels, Matthew Hayden, Michael Hussey. I've been lucky to have many left-handers in my team when I started off and having MS Dhoni in your side is great because he is so calm. The best thing about him is he does each and everything very calmly. I'm very excited to play in yellow again,” he further added.
