Ajinkya Rahane
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
2017
Dec: Team’s 3rd best scorer is made to ‘sit out’
Hindol Basu, Rahane’s curious saga continues, December 13, 2017: The Times of India
In his last 10 One-day innings, Ajinkya Rahane has put up these numbers: 61, 53, 70, 55, 5, 5, 39, 60, 72 and 103. A total of 523 runs at an average of 52.30 and a respectable strike-rate of 75.21. Only Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli have scored more runs than Rahane in their last 10 ODI innings. Yet, Rahane finds himself sitting out of the team even when India’s batting pillar Virat Kohli is absent.
Rahane has often been criticized for being too slow for modern-day ODI cricket. The strike-rate for his last four fifties reads like 82.43, 80.30, 92.10 and 85.93, which means Rahane is scoring nearly at a run-a-ball. Still, frequently he finds himself out-of-favour in India’s white-ball scheme of things.
Indian team’s captain in the absence of Kohli, Rohit Sharma had made it clear after the Dharamsala ODI, where the batting line-up failed miserably in seaming conditions, that Rahane has been identified by the team management as an opener only.
“I think we made it clear in Sri Lanka that he (Rahane) is an opening batsman and we don’t want to keep changing his batting slot. It plays on anyone’s mind not just his, if one’s batting order keeps on changing,” he said.
“We have identified him as a top-order batsman and that’s the only reason he has to sit out. Having said that, we understand that he has scored a lot of runs in the past few series. But, we also want to give these guys (Manish) Pandey, (Kedar) Jadhav and (Shreyas) Iyer fair amount of games before we start touring abroad,” added Sharma.
This kind of stubbornness seldom works and the team paid for it in Dharamsala. When the middle-order is inexperienced, horses for courses should be the policy. Knowing the fact that Rahane plays fast bowling well, the Mumbai lad should be the go-to man for any captain in difficult conditions.
