Inside out: Under pressure Rahane learns hard lessons as India lose hard-earned advantage

How bad would it feel to run out the best batsman in your team when he is well set for a big one, that too after he had to work really hard to settle down? How bad would it feel to be dismissed in the first over of a crucial phase you saved your wicket for and worked so hard to reach? How bad would it feel to be in that position when you know you have been outsmarted even before the umpire ruling so? And to make the case worse, how terrible would it be to face all of this in a span of 30 minutes on a cricket pitch? Well, Indian vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane had to swallow all of that while batting at the fag end of the first day’s play in Adelaide.

Things seemed under India’s control till the last ball of the 77th over when Rahane pushed a delivery from Nathan Lyon towards mid-off and called Kohli for a quick single, only to pull out of it when it was too late. That left Virat Kohli helplessly halfway down the pitch. Rahane had run out the most prolific batsman of his team with his poor calling and the reaction he gave after Kohli’s departure was telling of the impact he had taken of that poorly-judged non-single.

Now, the goal was to combat the upcoming threat of the new ball at which both he and Kohli had worked hard to reach. After the failure of Rahane, the batting partner and a team man, for which he is always credited, it was now the turn of Rahane, the batsman, to take the brunt of Starc’s inswinging thunderbolts. As it turned out, he was beaten by pace. It looked like he was taken aback by delivery of Starc. This was when the situation and the condition of the ball should have made it obvious for him that it will swing, especially since Starc was bowling it at a very full length.

When Rahane came out to bat, after the fall of Cheteshwar Pujara who had batted with typical resistance, India were not in a precarious position. But an instant fall of either him or Kohli would have landed India in such a position. But, Rahane too, like other senior batsmen before him, showed restraint and did not give any chance to the Australians, especially outside the off stump. He mistimed a hook shot but the risk was a bit more calculated than an attempt of driving through the cover.

Rahane got off the mark only on his 11th ball and took 28 balls to hit his first boundary that came only through a long half volley from Nathan Lyon and Rahane was up to the task and drove it through cover for a four, to get his innings going.

Rahane has been a core member of the leadership group in the team management and more often than not, Kohli backs him due to his mental toughness. 

Rahane rose through the ranks in the team on the back of crucial knocks he had played on the round of overseas tours for the Indian team beginning in the 2013-14 season. He scored runs all across the world including a 96 in South Africa and dominating centuries in New Zealand, Australia, and England. In that season of long overseas tours, Rahane leapfrogged to become the best batsman in the team. When the domestic season started in 2015 under the full-time leadership of Virat Kohli, with a series against South Africa, Rahane was not to miss out and scored two centuries against the Proteas in the Delhi test to stake a claim as one of the most important pillars of Indian batting.

It seemed as if the Indian team had found a solid middle-order batsman who could master both domestic as well as overseas conditions. But, runs started to dry up for Rahane and he started looking like a shadow of his former self.

He was handed a reality check when he was dropped for the first two Tests on the tour of South Africa in 2018 but collective failures of batsmen in the first two Tests allowed him space to get back into the team based on his past overseas performances. However, in the last Test tour of New Zealand, Rahane failed yet again and aggregated as little as 91 runs in four innings. Although all batsmen in the line up struggled on that tour, Rahane was expected to do better as he had scored a century there in the 2014 series.

The jury is out on Ajinkya Rahane and the ongoing series will be a litmus test of both his batting and mental toughness, a quality he will need in abundance if he has to turn things around in his batting and for leading the side to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy since Virat Kohli is set to hand over the mettle to him for the next three matches. What happened in Adelaide today was a cricketing mistake and Rahane will move on from that very quickly. But, he would do both himself and the team a great disservice if he does not tighten up his own game and get back into the groove to redeem his 2013-14 avatar to become the best batsman in the lineup. A lot will be riding on Rahane’s shoulder and interestingly, another failure as a batsman may well force him on the verge of exclusion from the team if not the squad.

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