India vs Australia: Ajinkya Rahane needs to overcome technical glitch against spin to end streak of failures in Tests

If the Indian cricket team had not won a majority of the Test series in the last two years, many under-performers would have been shown the door irrespective of their stature in the dressing room. Tough to admit, but Ajinkya Rahane would have been among those players for sure. For all the calmness and intelligence he brings to the team, the numbers against his name in score-sheet have disappointed for quite some time. Rahane last scored a Test hundred against Sri Lanka in their backyard in August 2017 - 132 off 222 balls. Before that, he scored a century in Indore against New Zealand in 2016. 188 off 381 balls. It was around this time that the slump started to creep in his Test career. [caption id=“attachment_4699761” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Ajinkya Rahane. Reuters[/caption] In 2018, Rahane’s best has been 80 against a depleted West Indies side at home. The talks of Rahane being one knock away from form has been doing the rounds for last two years. Former India spinner Murali Kartik still believes the Indian vice-captain is a need in the team. He said , “He (Rahane) is the vice-captain of the side. He is a calm head whom the captain turns to. Once he gets into the habit of scoring big runs, he will back in his zone.” But Kartik added that Rahane not scoring runs is more of a mental block then a technical glitch in his batting. He said, “With Rahane, it is a mental thing. I don’t think it is any technical thing. He is a rock solid player. He is a well-established player.” A sorry statistic, however, opens up a big picture. In the last two years, the Mumbai batsman has scored just 513 runs against the spinners at an average of 30.17 and fell to the spinners a staggering 17 times. The whole talk of the Rahane being one of the best batters against spin bowling in Indian cricket team takes a beating here as he has not been able to cope with the likes of Nathan Lyon, Moeen Ali, Adil Rashid and others in the given time frame. If former India batsman Aakash Chopra is to be believed, Rahane has been failing to pick the length of the spinners in the last 15 to 20 months. In an analytical video of ESPNcricinfo, he said, “Rahane is going a little wrong in whether to go forward or play the ball on back foot. Very often he has gone back to the ball that has pitched quite full. The moment you do that your options become very limited.” In such a scenario, playing an attacking shot becomes the only solution and even that is full of risk, which can lead to batsman giving catches to slips or playing on to the stumps. In the last tour Down Under, Rahane scored 399 runs in four Tests, averaging above 50. The major reason for this success was playing shots with a straight bat. There are no stats to justify that but of late Rahane has opted to play more sweep and angled shots, which has led to his downfall on a number of occasions. Chopra said that it reflects on the lack of confidence he has within to tackle spinners, which further explains Kartik’s point that Rahane is just not mentally there at the crease. One of the major reasons for India’s batting failure in the last two overseas tours was the absence of Rahane of the old in the XI. In a team which is fueled by Kohli and his habit of scoring monstrous runs, the pressure is constantly building. While the others have chipped in with bits and pieces here and there, Rahane has been consistently failing. It’s his reputation as India’s best bet in overseas Tests that has saved him. ‘You need a Rahane in South Africa, England, New Zealand and Australia’, has been the notion for the last few years. However, in the last one year, he has failed in half of these countries. Rahane needs to break the trend in Australia. It won’t be easy against the likes of Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc, Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon. But Rahane has grown enough in international cricket to overcome these challenges. Off to Adelaide now, where many tests amidst the Tests begin and a chance for redemption too.