Chance beckons for Ajinkya Rahane to put the past behind and shine again

The scene was Melbourne and Ajinkya Rahane strides to the giant G with Virat Kohli at the other end. With 49.5 overs done, the new ball had been negotiated and as a normal Victorian pitch would do, it had gone flat too. In many ways, the 2014 Boxing Day Test, which eventually turned out to […]
 
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Chance beckons for Ajinkya Rahane to put the past behind and shine again

The scene was Melbourne and Ajinkya Rahane strides to the giant G with Virat Kohli at the other end. With 49.5 overs done, the new ball had been negotiated and as a normal Victorian pitch would do, it had gone flat too.

In many ways, the 2014 Boxing Day Test, which eventually turned out to be the last Test MS Dhoni played for India, talked about Rahane the batsman more than any innings he had played before. And that is a big statement to make considering he had already hit a 51* and 96 in the Durban Test of 2013, a stoic 118 against New Zealand in Wellington, a match-winning century at Lord’s, a twin half-century in Southampton, and a gritty 51 in Adelaide.

The numbers are strong enough to call him the “Next Big Thing” in Indian cricket but in the course of 171 deliveries, Rahane showed a glimpse of his character that was beyond comprehension. He was a sight for sore eyes and matched Virat Kohli shot to shot to compile 147 and forge a partnership of 262 runs. 465 runs in the first innings might be a dream for the Indian batters now a days, but those were some days too.

Rahane and a career of two halves

Rahane kept on doing that time and time again in the next three years till that disastrous Sri Lanka series happened. He didn’t have an iota of idea of how to play a shot and in the process, lost his confidence too. Cricket is a game that is played on the pitch as much in the mind, and a look at the way the Mumbaikar has been dismissed in the last few years tells a story in itself.

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Chance beckons for Ajinkya Rahane to put the past behind and shine again

Playing from away to the body by standing on the backfoot, or pushing that front-foot forward to make himself a prime contender for edge flying to the slip or failing to channel his attacking instinct against the old ball and playing one shot too many proved to be his kryptonite.

His ability to play spin has been questioned multiple times and he hasn’t done any good to his own fortune in that count either. The statistics and the video footage are in sync so much that there is hardly any defense. Rahane has slipped into the rabbit hole and the push has seriously come into a shove.

However, he has now given a lifeline as big as he could ever imagine. With regular skipper Virat Kohli back in the country for the birth of his first child, Rahane will lead the Indian team for the remainder of the Test series. And thus he becomes primitive to the idea of India saving their face on the tour in the wake of 36 all out.

He will have to marshall the troupe with an equal amount of elan. The announcement of playing XI ahead of the Melbourne Test can surely be questioned for it allows the opposition the exact sequence to predict the outcome but that also showed the clarity of thought in the Indian team management and by extension, Ajinkya Rahane too. Rahane, in the previous dig against the Aussies back in 2017 and against Afghanistan in 2018, proved his tactical mettle but this will be a huge test of character.

But as far as the inspiration goes, he can’t ask anything more than playing in front of a primarily Indian crowd in the city of Batmania where he has runs galore. It was at the same venue he dominated Mitchell Johnson like he was playing in his personal backyard and it was the same venue that saw him finding the middle-order grip for the next six years. So you would expect a lot of Rahane fire at the massive G.

He is too good a batsman to be an also-ran and it is time he realizes the same by himself.