It’s OK if the Ajinkya Rahane comeback stops at three Tests, writes Aadya Sharma.
About eleven-and-a-half years ago, India’s current head coach found himself at a critical juncture of his playing career.
He’d gone the entire Australia tour, once a happy hunting ground for him, with just one fifty from eight innings. The trip was a colossal failure at the team level – India lost 4-0 – but it was also an unsightly personal defeat. Not just in terms of the lack of runs: no, Rahul Dravid had stacked up enough over the past year, including an England tour that only re-emphasised his greatness. It was more the manner: in Australia, he was out bowled six out of eight times – the impregnable defence torn open to an alarming degree.
When Ajinkya Rahane stood motionless last week, off stump yards out of its place, and the usually stiff-as-a-bollard Shannon Gabriel leaping and exulting in celebration, the mind somehow wandered back to Dravid. There aren’t too many similarities: Dravid wasn’t fresh off a bumper IPL season and hadn’t made a comeback after a year and a half (and top-scored for his team at the World Test Championship final). Dravid looked jaded, Rahane was refreshed.
But while Rahane hasn’t looked close to as out of place as Dravid did on that Australia tour (and it wouldn’t be a pretty sight if he eventually does, because it wasn’t one back then), he too is “definitely nearer the end than the beginning”, as Dravid had put it in 2012.
When he was called back this June, Rahane looked more assured of his strokes and more confident of himself. Cheteshwar Pujara, the other veteran with a glorious past and a rickety present, had been shelved. But Rahane’s solid domestic season, and a stunning IPL revival, meant that India did not feel uncomfortable in reinstating a 35-year-old at No.5, especially with Shreyas Iyer out with injury.
Ahead of the World Test Championship final, another desperate quest for a title, the move felt reassuring and confusing at the same time. Rahane had been India’s leading run-getter in the previous cycle, had top-scored in the first innings of the previous final, but from the pandemic and until he was dropped, his average of 24.26 was the lowest for anyone in the world with at least 30 innings in Tests over the same time.
It felt like two steps forward, one step back, especially with the ‘vice-captain’ tag appended to his name. What is the end goal with bringing Rahane in? Is he the No.5 for the entire cycle until 2025? And what happens when Iyer returns?
Scores of 3 & 8 in Roseau and Port of Spain were missed opportunities for Rahane in clearing those doubts, especially in a part of the world where he averaged 102.80 walking into the series. It takes us back to the Rahane question, and the No.5 spot. Iyer has waited for his chances, and grabbed them to a sufficient degree. There’s a whole hoard of middle-order batters at the domestic level, waiting for a shot at the whites. Is it fair to persist with Rahane? If yes, what’s the bigger goal?
On debut, Yashasvi Jaiswal pounced on his chance, spectacularly so, and is likely to be India’s opener going into the next tour in South Africa in December. It’s another reminder of the rich talent India are waiting to uncover: don’t be surprised if the average Indian career length gets shorter going forward, just because there will always be ready alternatives for each spot. With Jaiswal at the top, and Gill at three, KL Rahul – the other recovering India Test batter – is also an option to be tested in the middle order. Both Iyer and Rahul are likely to be fit and available for the South Africa trip.
Widen the pool, and there’s the obvious name of Sarfaraz Khan, who’s plundered runs across two record seasons: it’s reached a point where the magical patch of form might slowly be deserting him. He’s done everything he possibly can, but at 25, there’s still a lot to look forward to.
India’s next Test is five months away. The Boxing Day Test will be exactly a decade since Rahane announced himself as a future star on another South Africa trip. His 51* and 96 – the second one a fantastic solo act against Steyn-Philander-Morkel, gave India hope that there was life beyond the Tendulkars, Dravids and Laxmans. And India’s batting has come out of their shadows fairly well since.
For India, another transition is slowly taking shape. Just like Rahane from 2013, there are other 25-year-olds waiting to show what they have. A two-Test Rahane was thrown into the whirlpool of a South Africa tour, and thrived against arguably the best pace attack of that time. This transition might need a similar leap of faith.
After the 2012 Adelaide Test, the scoreline leading 4-0, Dravid was asked if he had made up his mind about the future. “I haven’t made any decision and there is no need to make any decisions now, we’re not playing another Test for seven to eight months so we’ll see how it pans out,” he said. Two months later, at a teary-eyed press conference, he announced his retirement.
Don’t expect something as dramatic from Rahane, or even a retirement at all. He’s still four years younger than what Dravid was, has played half the Tests and has scored 40 per cent the runs. He could still have runs in that blade of his, but India have shown, in the past and the recent future, that trying out fresh heads isn’t a bad call after all. Careers don’t need to be, and won’t be, Dravid-long anymore.
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