Dhoni’s calmness and Dravid’s patience…Rahane’s career ended before time.
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Ajinkya Rahane Retirement: Ajinkya Rahane was the owner of excellent balance and footwork. Who knew the art of batting on foreign pitches. He had no equal in dealing with off stump balls. He had expertise in backfoot. Rahane’s career ended prematurely. The result of excluding batsmen like Rahane from the team is that the Indian Test team started losing series at home, leave alone abroad, to batsmen whose bowling is also of second class.
Ajinkya Rahane’s career ended prematurely.
Technically strong, mentally super strong
Ajinkya, born in 1988 to Madhukar Rahane in Ahmednagar (Ahilyabai Nagar), Maharashtra, had decided in his childhood that he wanted to play cricket for the country. Rahane, who came out of Mumbai’s ‘Cricket Factory’, was neither aggressive like Virat Kohli nor used to put pressure on the opposing team like Rohit Sharma, but he knew how to hit the field with his strong technique and calm nature even in the worst conditions. He was as calm as Dhoni and also had the patience of Dravid. Rahane was as much a classical batsman as he was a dangerous hitter and an even more dangerous leader!
Ajinkya Rahane’s retirement.
Calm-Dravidian patience like Dhoni
Cricket is more a game of brain than ball and bat. Even the best batsman will fall apart if he cannot handle the pressure, but Rahane was the master of this temperament. Now just remember India’s tour of Australia in 2020-21. First match of the four-match Border-Gavaskar Trophy. In that day-night test played with pink ball in Melbourne, Team India was reduced to just 36 runs. It was called the black day of Indian cricket history. After this shameful defeat, Virat Kohli left the team in the lurch and returned to India because he was about to become a father. The morale of the team was at an abyss. In such a situation, Ajinkya Rahane took over the captaincy and what happened next is history. India drew one almost lost match and won two matches to win the trophy 2-1. This victory will act as the shining star in the shining career of Ajinkya Rahane.
Ajinkya Rahane retirement: He scored almost a thousand runs in his initial Ranji season itself.
emotional warrior
Has any human being ever been saved from lust, anger and jealousy? Cricketer is also a human being. Players are full of all these demerits, but Rahane knew how to control his nerves. Just like Dhoni. He was never seen celebrating excessively on the field nor getting angry. He knew how to control his emotions in both win and loss situations. Rahane will be counted among the all-time technically strong batsmen in the history of Indian cricket. His records abroad were even better than in India. There was a glimpse of a classic Test batsman like Rahul Dravid in his batting. He liked to eat kheer cold. That is, demoralizing the bowlers by giving respect to good balls and then defeating them by tiring them out!
Ajinkya Rahane retirement: Rahane said goodbye to his international career by sharing an emotional video.
Career ended prematurely
There is no doubt that it is very difficult to find a batsman like Ajinkya Rahane, but he could not fit in modern-day cricket. Pressure to score fast. The pressure of hitting fours and sixes on every ball affected his career. This was the reason why first he was left out of Team India’s T-20 planning and then from the ODI format. He could have easily played 100 matches in Tests, but due to his inability to convert his good start into a big score, the selectors turned their backs on him here too. Ajinkya scored 5077, 2962 and 375 runs for India in 85 Tests, 90 ODIs and 20 T-20 Internationals respectively.
About the Author
Anshul Talmale has been captaining the sports desk of Network18 Group since February 2025, wearing the jersey of Deputy News Editor. Here sports content planning, editorial direction and strategy…
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