Rahane: The Quiet Lad of Indian Cricket

Unassuming and calm, Ajinkya Rahane is a bit of an outsider in the flashy world of modern-day Indian cricket. Visible only when he bats or fields brilliantly, this young man from Mumbai should become a pivotal act of Team India very soon.

When he sits in the dugout or can be sighted in and around the dressing room, he often seems to be lost in a private little world of his own. When he accompanies his team to the field, the focus is rarely on him until he pulls off a stunning catch or executes a brilliant run-out. When he walks up to receive a Player of the Match award because of his batting, he tries to deflect attention from his own performance and prefers to talk about his team’s show instead.

Quietly resourceful, immensely talented, increasingly consistent, Ajinkya Rahane is a bit of an aberration at a time when stardom in cricket is achieved most easily by those who manage to attract the attention of the crowds, the spider cameras and the TV show watchers. He is the quintessential cricketer who plays the game to play it, and that alone.

When asked on television about Rahane, his former Ranji Trophy captain Amol Muzumdar recalled: “A very quiet boy, and completely focused. He worked extremely hard at his game. Cricket is his life.”

In this edition of the Indian Premier League, Rahane, after six matches, is the wearer of the Orange Cap, a prestigious headgear which reminds one of a baton in relay races. It gets transferred from one head to another; the head that wears it is of the man who has scored the highest number of runs at any given stage of the tournament.

After six matches, Rahane, who is playing for the Rajasthan Royals has scored 305 runs, which is 55 more than David Warner, the second man on the list. He has hit three superb half-centuries against Sunrisers Hyderabad, Chennai Super Kings and Kings XI Punjab, which includes two Player of the Match-winning performances against Sunrisers and CSK. Exactly the kind of show that turns a good squad into a winning one, but then Rahane is on his way to becoming a key member player of the Indian cricket team. And, this is just the IPL.

Because, in the last 12 months, Ajinkya Rahane has been the most consistent Indian batsman in all three forms of the game.

In fact, it’s an irritating thought that a talent like him is still a step or two short of becoming a pivotal member of the squad. Many cricket lovers know that he can leave that ODI batting average of 31.05 after 54 matches far behind. This belief doesn’t come from irrational pseudo-patriotism; instead, it emerges from a careful observation of the manner in which he bats.

Short and frail, Rahane doesn’t own superhuman biceps. He doesn’t, and cannot, use those heavier-than-heavy bats to muscle the ball out of the boundary in the shorter forms of the game. He is an artist who relies on touch and timing, with the ball finding the middle of the bat and all the right gaps that can fetch him runs. Once settled, he scores at a fairly quick rate. He can pull and hook short deliveries, and sway or move his head out of the way of those that must not be meddled with.

A weakness he does have—although he has been working on it with a fair degree of success—is a tendency to play the odd loose shot with an instinctive preference for aerial ones, which, at times, are perfectly timed as well. One familiar manner of his dismissal is the one in which the ball flies, dips and lands in the palms of a fielder in the inner ring. Such unforced errors have resulted in dismal shows such as the one against the lowly-ranked Bangladesh in 2014 in which he scored 67 runs in three matches.

Ever since India toured England in 2014, Rahane seems to be coming into his own as an ODI batsman. In Birmingham, he scored a brilliant Player of the Match-winning century as India decimated England by nine wickets. When Sri Lanka toured India, he scored a ton in Cuttack in a match the home team won by 169 runs. Against the Proteas in the ICC World Cup, he scored a magnificent 60-ball 79 to help India set up a strong total, a blow from which the former weren’t able to recover. But, the wait for that one series in which he will average in the 80s or more continues. With a little bit of caution,though not selfish circumspection, he should get there very soon.

New to Test cricket after having made a forgettable debut against England in 2013, it is in the longer version of the game that he has truly sparkled. He has played merely 14 Test matches and averaged nearly 45 at a time when India’s performance in the five-day format has been well below par. He has a reservoir of patience, a rarity at a time when many Indian batsmen have struggled to check those rash shots and also while trying to negotiate the short ball. Rahane has never had a problem with the average short delivery. He manages to contain his temptation for playing the loose shot far better in the longer version.

Even when Australia were all over India in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, he scripted a marvellous knock of 147 in the first innings in the Melbourne test in December2014, which will be best remembered for the dramatic retirement of M.S. Dhoni from the five-day format after the match got over. In the Lords test that India won against England in July, 2014, he reached the three-figure mark in what was a mediocre series for him otherwise.

The win at the Lords was a more-than-rare event for Team India overseas, and history will talk about it for Ishant Sharma’s match-winning spell in the second innings. But it is important not to forget that Rahane in the first and Murali Vijay in the second innings batted stably while Ravindra Jadeja combined with Bhuvaneshwar Kumar in a significant partnership down the order, giving India a target to defend which they did.

Rahane’s T20 international career may not have flourished as yet; but, it is impossible to judge a batsman’s merit in the hit-and-disappear format after he has played merely 11 matches. What’s obvious by now is that he has the wherewithal to score briskly and also drop anchor when required. Most batsmen sacrifice textbook cricket in their quest for ultra-quick scoring, but not Rahane, who bats freely, uninhibitedly, and collects his runs at a good pace without letting go of purity in batsmanship.

Chances are that we will never see a Rahane knock with 20 sixes in the shortest version ever. That’s fine, since he is unlikely to go through a lean trot in which he won’t go past the double-digit mark 10 times in succession. Even when he is grappling with loss of form like every batsman does once in a while, he will manage to play truant by driving the ball fluently through the gaps, hit the odd six with sheer timing, and end up getting 20s and 30s from time to time. A 30 in a T20 match with a quick scorer at the other end could result in a 100-run partnership, which is, potentially, the difference between a win and a loss.

In the flashy world of modern-day cricket which is marked—and often, marred—by showmanship, Ajinkya Rahane is an outsider who, interestingly enough, is at complete ease with the environment around him. If he consolidates his position as the old-fashioned ‘gentleman’ in modern-day cricket which he should, Indian fans of the game will be thankful to him.