- Thursday, February 27, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
OUT-OF-FORM India batter Ajinkya Rahane, whose place in the Test playing XI has come under scrutiny, recently made an explosive claim saying “someone else took the credit” for decisions he took to resurrect Team India during the 2020-21 tour of Australia after the visitors faced a humiliating defeat in the first Test match in Adelaide Oval.
India were bowled out for a paltry 36 in their second innings in that game after taking a lead in the first and was hammered by the hosts by eight wickets.
Virat Kohli, who was India’s regular captain then, returned home after the thrashing as his actor wife Anushka Sharma was due to deliver their first child.
Rahane, the vice captain then, took over the reins and India made a brilliant comeback in the series to win the four-game affair 2-1. It was India’s second successive Test series victory Down Under after the 2018-19 one which also read an identical scoreline in their favour.
India levelled the series in the second Test in Melbourne by winning by eight wickets under Rahane who himself hit a hundred. But the batter said in an episode of ‘Backstage With Boria’ programme that the credit for the victory was taken by somebody else.
“I know what I’ve done there. I don’t need to tell anyone. That’s not my nature to go and take credit. Yes, there were some things that I took the decisions on the field or in the dressing room but someone else took the credit for it,” the 33-year-old, who has a loss-less captaincy record in the long format, said.
“(What was) important for me was that we won the series. That was a historical series and for me, that was really special,” he added.
While Rahane did not take any names but his comments could well be a veiled attack on the then head coach Ravi Shastri, who was widely acclaimed for the team’s performance and dominated the media space for being the architect of the turnaround given the Indian dressing room resembled a hospital ward at one point.
Rahane earned plaudits from the cricket fraternity for the manner in which he led the heavily depleted team in one of the most difficult situations, not just in Melbourne but through the remainder of the four-match series.
India missed three front-line players at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and continued to lose key players through the series to injuries but still emerged triumphant at the end of it all.
“After that, the reactions from people or those who took credit or what was said on the media, ‘I did this’ or ‘This was my decision’, or ‘This was my call’, it was for them to talk about,” Rahane said.
“From my end, I knew what decisions I took on the field and what decisions I took on my instincts. Yes, we talked with the management too but I used to laugh about it, that is what I did on the field, I never talk much about myself or praise myself. But what I did there, I knew,” he said.
The last time Rahane led India in Tests was in the first Test against New Zealand at home last year and the game ended in a draw after the Kiwi tail wagged strongly. But he lost the side’s vice captaincy before the recent tour of South Africa because of his poor form.
In South Africa, he made 136 runs from six innings at a below-par average of 22.67.
But the batter, who has accepted Indian cricket board chief Sourav Ganguly’s advice to play in the domestic Ranji Trophy to regain touch, remains unruffled by the criticism over his form.
“I just smile at it. People who generally know the sport will not talk like that. I don’t want to get too deep into that. Everyone knows it, you know it, what happened in Australia. Even after and before Australia, the contributions I made, especially in red-ball cricket, I don’t want to talk about it but Australia was really. As I said, people who know the sport, love the sport they’ll talk sensibly,” he said.
