Former Rajasthan Royals coach Paddy Upton weighed in on the Suresh Raina saga and said that everyone should respect the decision made by the Indian batsman. Raina, citing “personal reasons”, decided to leave the Chennai Super Kings in the UAE to return home last week. Raina’s decision came amid growing number of Covid-19 cases at the CSK camp, and a family tragedy that occurred back home. Though, Raina’s reasons for returning home are still not officially declared.
“There are a number of other players who are very much in the same boat as Suresh Raina and I just hope that the teams are aware of that and are catering for that,” Upton said in an interview to ESPNCricinfo. “There are coaches who are gonna be struggling, there are support staff who are gonna be struggling in that three-month bio-bubble.
“Arriving there already depleted, having navigated, being locked indoors, we are gonna find players who haven’t been exercising, we will see some strangely overweight players, we will see players out of nick. I know some players have been lucky to be able to get into the nets, so they are gonna go ahead,” he added.
Upton said that the coaching staff of IPL teams will have to expect these things and support players instead of letting out a “knee-jerk reaction”.
{{/usCountry}}Upton said that the coaching staff of IPL teams will have to expect these things and support players instead of letting out a “knee-jerk reaction”.
{{/usCountry}}“We need to be predicting these strange things and not have a knee-jerk reaction. When all of a sudden Suresh Raina goes home, we have this knee-jerk reaction and strange comments in the media. Funny things are gonna happen.
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“Smart teams will predict them, put things in place and have that cushion of support system to be able to support players. The teams that do that best are gonna go so far ahead of the other teams that really don’t do that well and they [who don’t do that] are just gonna fall over, unfortunately, in this IPL,” he added.
Further speaking in support of Raina, Upton said that people should not talk about the money he is going to lose as he thinks Raina’s reasons for leaving are more significant for him than that.
“There are very few players who when cross the rope are motivated by money,” Upton said. “Yes, it’s part of the motivation but I don’t think that’s a strong consideration for Suresh. Whatever he is going home for is more significant than the large amount of money he is not going to be making.
“So it’s probably not ideal to be drawing that analogy and saying. ‘look, how much money he is missing’. He knows that he has made a decision and we need to really respect that,” Upton signed off.