Ajinkya Rahane: The calm vice-captain who stepped up to the plate

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  • Rahane with the ICC Test mace after the Dharamsala Test [Sportzpics]

    In the post-match press conference in Dharamsala, one of Virat Kohli’s statements caught the eye. No, not the one where he claimed ‘friendship with Australian cricketers’ was damaged irreparably. Instead, it was where he talked about sitting out this series-decider after playing 54 Tests in succession.

    “The impact injury on my shoulder left me no choice but to pull out of the fourth Test. It was difficult watching from the outside when you have been in the thick of things all the time for so many years and seasons,” said Kohli on Tuesday.

    “But the pleasing thing is when you see guys take responsibility in your absence, and go out there to play one of the best ever Tests. I really enjoyed it. It was not easy to not play this game, but at the end of the day sitting here and having won the series, I have no complaints.”

    It is not just in one aspect that the Indian captain went missing throughout the series. He had come into the matches against the Baggy Green with a mountain of runs behind him, and given the straight shoot-out against Steve Smith for the No.1 ranked Test batsman spot, captain Kohli was expected to replicate the form he showed during the 2014-15 tour of Australia – in which he scored four hundreds in as many Tests.

    Instead, the 28-year-old suffered a first failure since the 2014 tour of England, scoring only 46 runs in five innings. Maybe it was the law of averages finally catching up after a stellar season, or maybe the weight of expectations got to him for once.

    Perhaps he was distracted, for the Australian camp did their very best to unsettle him and succeeded at least in terms of statistics. This Kohli obsession, and the inability of the Indian skipper to back down, or even pick his battles optimally, brought this four-Test series to a constant boil.

    Ajinkya Rahane’s calm, in that sense, was like a cool breeze blowing on your face after a parched afternoon in the sun.

    Never mind his quiet demeanour, there is steely grit about the vice-captain, one that has seen him excel in different overseas conditions. He is dissimilar to Kohli in that he keeps his thoughts to himself, rarely uttering a word in anger, yet his eyes will showcase enough hostility to intimidate the opposition.

    Throughout the fourth Test, Rahane was on the money. It started when he picked the team.

    “I told him it is his Test and he said he wanted five bowlers. Kuldeep Yadav was the x-factor and it was a great call,” said Kohli.

    Kuldeep had destroyed the Australian batting in their first innings, as the visitors faltered despite Smith’s hundred and the advantage of winning the toss.

    There was a well-thought out plan behind this. Rahane plugged the singles, something Australia are adept at, targeting the weak fielder to rotate the strike. Unlike Kohli, Rahane didn’t opt for in-out fields as Smith got settled in, or even when Peter Handscomb or Glenn Maxwell tried to hit out against the left-arm wrist spinner.

    Kuldeep admitted that he liked to flight the ball and isn’t scared of getting hit. Rahane backed him to the hilt and Australia were bamboozled.

    The second innings was more of the same, even if Maxwell succeeded in knocking Kuldeep out of the attack. Then, with Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja deployed in tandem, Rahane choked the Australian run-scoring once again.

    The other instance of his intensive impression on the game was during India’s low chase. The 106-run target was never going to be too tough, but sometimes these scores can be tricky.

    Indeed, it looked that Australia could make one final charge in keeping with how the series had progressed when Murali Vijay and Cheteshwar Pujara got out in quick succession. The batsman in Rahane then came forth and hit 38 off 27 balls, taking India across the finish line in no time.

    “It was in Galle that we lost whilst chasing a low total. In such chases, 30-40 quick runs can make all the difference,” he said, afterwards.

    Sure, Kohli has led India to the top of world cricket in Tests, and there is every chance that his abounding energy will rub off in other formats as well. But in a hard-boiled series, where silently working out the opposition was at a premium and loud ego tussles were the norm, Rahane’s calm was what India needed to win the most.

    This was Rahane’s silent brand of aggression, playing second fiddle to Kohli, much like Rahul Dravid’s calm played to Sourav Ganguly’s liveliness. It makes for a great pairing at the helm of this Indian team, and it was with this confidence that allowed Rahane to step into Kohli’s shoes. This is also the underlying point of this series and the long home season as a whole.

    At different times, India have benefitted from different players standing up and making a contribution. It has been the bedrock of their elevation to the No.1 Test ranking and has been the genesis of their rotation policy, particularly helping their bowling attack.

    “Starting from the West Indies series, we have had almost 25 players playing for us. All 25 have stood up in different conditions,” said coach Anil Kumble, after the 2-1 series win over Australia.

    You can almost identify his words with names and how those particular players settled seamlessly into the Indian eleven.

    Starting from the tour of West Indies when Jadeja was not even in the first eleven and Amit Mishra was the second choice spinner. The roles reversed when the home season came around.

    Mohammed Shami and Umesh Yadav became the lead bowlers, with Ishant Sharma stepping in and out of the side, as rotation kicked in. The sparing use of Bhuvneshwar Kumar in conditions that suited his strengths was perhaps the biggest indicator of how the players bought into the team’s cause.

    Then, there was the openers’ merry-go-round. One by one, Vijay, KL Rahul and Shikhar Dhawan got injured, allowing Gautam Gambhir and Abhinav Mukund to step in.

    Parthiv Patel provided an able replacement for Wriddhiman Saha when the latter was injured, while Karun Nair, Rohit Sharma, and Shreyas Iyer have been part of the middle-order merry-go-round. The crux of this fruitful selection policy is in the results – 17 Tests, 12 wins, one loss, and four draws.

    Each of these players have stepped up to the plate, and none more so than Rahane who led India to victory in Kohli’s absence.

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