Raina- A Hero and a Zero

Recently, in the first ODI against England, Suresh Kumar Raina crossed the fairly significant milestone of 3000 runs in One Day Internationals. Although his ODI career has been nowhere as up and down as his Test career, he hasn't had a smooth run in the ODI's as well. He started his career pretty well, but lost his way in between, during the Greg Chappell's reign. From 2008 onwards, he has been a permanent member of the ODI squad.
Before the 2011 WC, Raina again lost a bit of form, which led him to play only 4 matches in the big event..
Raina's average is not too impressive at 35.51, but it must be remembered that almost 80 percent of his innings have come while batting at number 5 or lower. And at that position, his strike rate and average are very good. In fact since 2008, the only man who batting at Number 5 or lower, who has a better average and strike rate is Mr Cool, MS Dhoni..
One of the things that make Raina such a good lower order player is that he doesn't take much of a time to settle in. Whenever there is a vacancy higher up the order, Suresh Raina deserves to have a shot at it. His proficiency in the ODI format and his stats suggest that he would do a pretty good job at that position.
Moving to Suresh Raina's test career, he hasn't tasted much of a success in this format of the game. Though he had played just 15 matches as of now, but his record is far from being impressive. He averages a meagre 29.5 in test matches. And his only century coming up in his debut match against Sri Lanka. Unlike his miserable debut in ODI's, where he was dismissed first ball by Mutthiah Muralitharan ,  he started promisingly in test cricket. But hasn't reached any height in this format.
After the World Cup, Raina took over as captain of the ODI side for the tour of the West Indies after Dhoni opted to rest and Gambhir was injured. He score 232 runs at an average of 46.4 making crucial fifties in each Test.
But in England, aside from the half century in the first test, Raina managed just 27 runs from seven innings. He struggled against the short bowling and made a 29-ball duck in the final test, the longest in India's Test history.
He is much more classy played than his record suggests. We hope to see him retain his place in the Test squad and become a permanent member in all three formats of the game.

Slinga Malinga- The Yorker Man

Today, on 8th Oct, in the match against Somerset, Separamadu Lasith Malinga again showed why he is such a dangerous bowler in death overs. His figures on 20/4 justified his man of the match award. First Malinga took out Somerset's two biggest batsmen of the tournament, Peter Trego and Roelof van der Merwe, with devilish yorkers and changes of pace. Then he came back in the death overs to almost pick up yet another hat trick in a T20 game.
The game was an important one, none other than the semifinal of Champions League T20. Mumbai Indians wanted to book a berth in the finals against RCB, and so did Somerset, who have never won any major tournament so far.
It looked like Mumbai Indians have put enough runs on the board after the first innings was over. But no total is big enough in T20 cricket.
Mumbai Indians won the toss and elected to bat first. They ran away at the top through Aiden Blizzard's quick fire half century. And in the end, by some fearsome batting from Sathish and Yadav to put up their best batting effort of the tournament.
Malinga opened the bowling attack for Somerset and picked up dangerous Peter Trego in the very first over. Trego had no clue what so ever as to what to do with the pacy away going yorker. He was the first victim of Lasith Malinga. This was the beginning of what was going to be a sensational piece of bowling from Slinga Malinga.
Somerset hadn't yet put their first step properly after the departure of Trego, Malinga claimed the prized wicket of in form and dangerous Roelof van der Merwe. RVDM was bowled with a slow low full toss. After that Kieswetter and Hildreth started rebuilding the innings scoring at a crisp rate and keeping in breath with the required rate. The match was evenly poised till 17th over with both sides having a chance to win the semifinal.
Malinga was bought into the attack when Somerset required just 29 runs to win from 18 balls at a run rate of 9.66, which is not a huge task in a T2O match. Malinga bowled unplayable deliveries to give away just 7 runs off the 18th over.
Still 22 required off 12 bowls. Very Much Possible. James Franklin bowled a brilliant over by picking up 2 wickets for 7 runs in that over. The match could still tilt in anybody's favor. Though Mumbai Indians were favorite at this moment.
15 runs required to win from 6 balls. Difficult but not impossible. Malinga bowled an exceptional over by giving away just 3 runs and damaging the furniture of 2 more batsmen. In both the cases, middle stump was uprooted. His accuracy being as sharp as Arjun's arch.
Scoring runs consistently on his bowling is becoming more and more difficult. He is the first and only bowler to have two World Cup hat-tricks, the first and only bowler to have taken three hat-tricks in ODI's and he is also the first and only player to have taken four wickets in four consecutive bowls in any form of international cricket. Though he has retired from the longer version of the game, he still excites and entertains cricket lovers all over the world with his slinging accurate yorkers in ODI's and T20 games. Hope to see his great swinging yorkers for many more years to come.