Legendary India batter Sunil Gavaskar said he was surprised that there were no takers for Suresh Raina at the Indian Premier League (IPL) mega auction. Raina, 35, went unsold on Day 1 of the mega auction in Bengaluru and was not even part of the list of players who were called back for the accelerated process towards the end of the second day of the bidding process.

Suresh Raina, who had his base price of Rs 2 crore, did not even get a bid from his former franchise Chennai Super Kings, eventually going unsold for the first time in the history of the tournament.

Speaking to Sports Tak, Sunil Gavaskar said he was not surprised by the fact that the likes of Ishant Sharma and Amit Mishra went unsold because they are “one-dimensional” players but Raina, a handy all-rounder, not attracting a bid did surprise the legendary opener.

Despite some teams having been on short supply of experienced India batters, a bid did not come Raina’s way. The ‘Chinna Thala’ of CSK might have even played his last IPL match, ending a storied career in which he was a pillar of strength for the Super Kings.

“For Raina, I was definitely surprised. He is left-handed, does off-spin bowling, and is experienced,” Gavaskar said.

“In the last season, in the Dubai pitches, where there is a lot of bounce, he did look a little scared and this is why I feel people must have felt that even in India we will have fast bowlers and so maybe he wasn’t picked for that reason. But only the franchises could tell us why they had this feeling about him,” he added.

The former Chennai Super Kings star has scored 5528 runs in 204 matches in the history of IPL. He is 4th on the list of leading run-scorers in the IPL only behind Virat Kohli (6283), Shikhar Dhawan (5784) and Rohit Sharma (5611).

However, he retired from international cricket in 2020, did not play competitive cricket in the lead up to the mega auction with his last competitive appearance coming in IPL 2021. The decline of Raina’s stocks in the IPL was evident when he was dropped from the CSK XI for the business end of the last season.

Meanwhile, CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan said the franchise was disappointed that it was not able to snap up Raina t the mega auction. The 4-time champions filled their quota of 25 players but were still left with a purse of Rs 2.90 crore at the end of the 2-day auction.

“Raina has been one of the most consistent performers for CSK for the last 12 years. Of course, it was very difficult for us, no to have Raina but at the same time, you should also understand that the team composition depends on the form and kind of team which any team would like to have so that’s one of the reasons why we thought he may not fit into this team,” Viswanathan said.