You almost felt sorry for him. Probably he didn’t deserve to be there in the first place. He hadn’t done enough to win that spot in the squad, forget in the final XI. Everyone knew it. Probably even he did. But still nobody deserved to be shown up this way. Not even Suresh Raina. This was more than embarrassing. It was humiliating.

That was the SCG. And he was donning whites. It was his return to the whites. His first outing in them for over two years. It lasted all of four deliveries, two of which dismissed him. He got bat to one of them, a thick edge to the keeper off Shane Watson in the first innings. In the second, he batted as if Mitchell Starc was not bowling cricket balls but slinging shot-puts at him. It looked like both he and his feet would have been better off anywhere else but at the centre of the SCG. It was like watching someone on death-row batting in a Test match. Resigned to his fate, fearing the inevitable and helplessly aware that the end wasn’t nigh, it was now.

But again, that was the SCG. That was last week. On Thursday, Raina was at the MCG. He hadn’t been part of the ODI jersey unveiling earlier in the afternoon. It was strange in a way. Raina has always been the one for these occasions. The quintessential hobnobber, the one to lift the spirits of those around him. He brings energy to the side.

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