The reason behind Suresh Raina’s exclusion from the BCCI grade contract.

One of India’s finest and stylish left handed batsmen, Suresh Raina, found himself missing from the recent BCCI’s grade contract. The southpaw’s exclusion?from the grade contract has been the major element of surprise in the recent declaration and has raised several questions among his fans. The UP based cricketer has been an integral part of the limited overs format for the Indian team but his last venture in the ODIs and tests came in 2015. The left hander last played for India in T20I series vs England earlier in February this year.

The BCCI contract included three subdivisions namely “Grade A”, “Grade B” and “Grade C” with the players in the respective divisions receiving 2 crores, 1 crore and 50 lakhs annually respectively. Raina was the major absentee in the list and questions cropped up for the same. However his coach hinted at the reasons for his exclusion when he called Raina as a family man. The coach( who requested anonymity) said “?His priorities have changed after he became a family man. I have noticed that he has not been concentrating on his game. He has become a reluctant cricketer. He just played three Ranji matches for UP this season and didn?t turn out for Mushtaq Ali and Vijay Hazare tournaments”.

Suresh Raina married his friend Priyanka Chaudhary in 2015 and was blessed with a daughter in 2016.Since then, he has always been found spending a lot of time with his family.It will be interesting to note how the cricketer’s career is shaped ahead after his absence from the contract list. With more and more young players giving promising performances it will be difficult for the 30 year old to be in the race.The Gujarat Lions skipper can still make his way for the shortest format of the game through some decent performances in the IPL. He has been one of the leading run scorers for the league and undoubtedly a very fine fielder.