Analysing the role of Ajinkya Rahane in the limited-overs format
India, being a colossal cricketing nation, is known for producing batting wonders over the years. Names like Sachin Tendulkar, Sunil Gavaskar and Rahul Dravid comes to mind first without meaning any disrespect to the other numerous batsmen who have made names for themselves by their superlative batting skills.
Amongst the current bunch of batsmen, the one who possess extra ordinary talent is Ajinkya Rahane. The Maharashtra-born cricketer has gone up the ranks and his sheer finesse has impressed one and all and managed to catch the eyes of many legends of the game.
Possessing a tremendous first-class average of 56.90, Rahane has turned out to be India’s ace batsman in all the recent overseas Test series for India. He scored hundreds in New Zealand, England, South Africa and Sri Lanka, playing a key role in India’s triumph over the latter with a century after coming into the bat at the crucial No 3 spot.
Along with his batting skills, he is an acrobatic fielder too. He has the safest hands in the team when it comes to catching which he illustrated by grabbing a record number of 8 catches in a Test match against Sri Lanka. He also has a pretty accurate throwing arm too. He is undoubtedly one of the best fielders India has currently.
Despite all his heroics in the longest format of the game, he has not been able to become a prominent member of the limited overs squad. He has played a few good innings here and there, but consistency is missing in his game.
MS Dhoni recently talked about his inability to turn the strike over during the middle overs on slow pitches and the assessment is not without truth. Rahane somehow gets into a shell in the middle overs and looks to hit the big shots when he should be actually looking to pick up the singles and doubles. It imposes a lot of pressure on the finishers Suresh Raina and MS Dhoni to increase the scoring rate at the death overs.
Another possible reason could be that he has been a top order batsman in all the domestic competitions as well as the IPL. With the top three spots grabbed firmly by Shikhar Dhawan, Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli, he is made to bat in the middle order. His pace and style to build the innings in Test matches is acceptable without doubts, but the pace in ODIs and T20s mars the momentum of the innings.
Playing for Rajasthan Royals in the IPL, he has played some marvellous innings and won matches single-handedly for the team. He has opened the innings for India on many occasions as well, but that has happened only when one of the settled openers got injured. On all the other occasions, he is bound to be pushed down the order, if he gets to play that is.
Though he can press on the accelerator and also drop the anchor if required, Rahane has been unable to keep the momentum going throughout the innings. He has acquired all the skills that a good player needs to have. Classy batting and agile fielding make him an optimal player for the team. But his lack of consistency has kept him out of the side.
With the top 3 spots been taken up, he has to work on his game for the middle overs. He needs to learn from his idol Rahul Dravid, who pretty much like him, did not have the explosive style of batting the limited-overs formats usually demands. But he went on to score more than 10000 runs in ODIs for India.
What he did well was that he used to play the role of a sheet anchor. He used to stand firm at one end and the whole innings revolved around him which made him a highly successful limited overs batsman.
There are definitely no doubts about Rahane’s talent. If only he works out ways to rotate the strike in the middle overs and manage to get along with the innings, Rahane can cement his spot in the ODI format and go down in history as a legend of the game, just like Steve Waugh said.