Mumbai: Ajinkya Rahane never had it easy. Even the weather gods tested his resolve. After a bowling masterclass from India’s bowlers at the MCG in the Boxing Day Test match, the Melbourne sky turned dark on Day 2. The batters had to do it the hard way.
During the 2020-21 Australian tour, Rahane captained India after regular skipper Virat Kohli had left for home for personal reasons. Without their ace batter and the lingering aftertaste of 36 all out from the previous Test match, Rahane stepped out to bat at cricket’s theatre of dreams.
The MCG can be anything but intimate. With its grand terraces, vast expanse of patterned outfield, and massive stands, the scale feels every bit imposing.
For Rahane, though, this is where he had delivered a statement ton, six summers before. In 2014, in his innings of 147, he looked Mitchell Johnson in the eye, whipping him over mid-wicket with the confidence of a field marshal.
One visible difference between the two Rahanes, six years apart, was that the older version had lost some fluency to the vicissitudes of time. Rahane had to summon his inner steel, something that always stood him in good stead. Carrying kit bags loaded with cricket willow as a 7-year-old on crowded local trains from Central Mumbai to the maidans in South Mumbai toughens you up from an early age.
As he lost wickets around him – the rising star Shubman Gill, Rishabh Pant could only deliver a cameo, and this wasn’t the day for obstinate resistance from Cheteshwar Pujara either – Rahane held firm. Quietly, with late glides and check drives, he anchored India’s batting essay with determination.
When he reached the three-figure mark, the captain was so submerged in the cause that he didn’t even break into a smile. One minute shy of spending 6 hours at the crease, Rahane finally had to go, early on Day 3, to a run-out. It was an error of judgement from his batting partner Ravindra Jadeja. But Rahane made sure Jadeja didn’t feel the burden of the guilt that he himself had felt after a run-out misunderstanding with Kohli in the previous Test which led to Kohli’s dismissal and proved to be match-turning.
The reason Rahane’s Melbourne 112 ranks higher than any other innings he played across his 85-Test career is that it propelled him to lead India to the most epochal Test series win away from home. In his previous Melbourne ton of 147, Kohli had been an equal partner, and inevitably became the lead act. Here, the understated Mumbai batter took the driving seat and saw the team past the finish line. Not the most demonstrative, he led by example.
It was a series where the long-in-waiting captain would unpack all he had learnt from his travails in international cricket, use his tactical game sense – leg-side trap et al—and eventually guide a bowling attack of rank outsiders to beat the Australians at Brisbane.
Rahane could have led India to more glory. India won 4 of the 6 Test matches with him as skipper and never lost. But towards the second half of his career, his batting form wasn’t the best. The Australian chapter of his impressive journey marks out as the most special. And the summer of 2020 Down Under, as a career highlight.
It was against the Aussies that he started his Test career in 2013. That beginning in Delhi was with a false stroke. But he went on to find his complete range against the most formidable bowling attack of his generation: Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood, Mitch Starc and Nathan Lyon.
In Australia, Rahane averaged 42. For his talent, this is about the career average he would have, at the least, liked to have finished with rather than the underwhelming 38.46. But Rahane was, above all, the lifesaver among a battery of strokemakers who answered every SOS call. And lifesavers are not judged merely by statistics on a scoresheet.