Why it’s time for Pant at 5, Rahane at 6
Rahane needs breathing space. Who better than Pant to provide it.
The seeds of this idea were sown in me before but on a recent morning I just got more convinced about it. I was watching the highlights of the recent Boxing Day Test at MCG and a passage from Day 2 of the game which India won just strengthened my belief.
You’ve seen me tweet about it, you know which passage I’m going to speak of. Yes. I feel Rishabh Pant’s 40-ball 29 remains a very underacknowledged effort, both in context of that Test match and the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. Even if it wasn’t so underacknowledged at the time, it became as such by the end of the series.
Partly down to our short-term cricketing memories these days and partly because of Pant’s own stellar efforts at SCG and the Gabba, I just feel that impactful cameo hasn’t really got its due. And so, it’s worth recalling the context of the situation and the magnitude of that innings.
Despite having dismissed Australia for a paltry 195 and having put a strong foot forward towards recovering from the ignominy of ’36 all-out’, India could hardly feel secured about their chances of a victory at MCG given the robust nature of the Australian attack and the surface offering steep bounce and just enough seam movement to go with it.
The visitors were 116/4 when Pant walked up to the crease, still trailing by 79 runs. And, even though stand-in captain Ajinkya Rahane was there at the other end on 21*, you couldn’t help but sense the tension or avoid the nagging fear of another quick wicket, which would’ve then opened up the doors for Australia and leave India vulnerable.
Till then, the innings had proceeded attritionally, with Cummins & co hardly giving away a thing. India needed to change the pace of the play and in doing so, put the pressure back on Australia. This is where Pant came to his team’s rescue and made an instant impact. That innings completely transformed the momentum of the game. It’s not just the pull and drive that went to the boundary, but the sheer energy and the intent with which he batted. Suddenly, you could sense India are in the driver’s seat. Australia were forced to be just a tad more defensive with their lengths and field setting, and though they got Pant out immediately thereafter, the mood of the setting had been changed irrevocably.
Rahane and Jadeja then rode on the wave and took India’s lead past 100. At one stage it seemed Australia could take a lead themselves but ended up conceding one of 131. You know what happened thereafter. It was Pant who set India on that path. Rahane, I felt, gained significantly out of that Pant cameo. He struck one of the finest hundreds by an Indian in Test match cricket overseas. But you could see a genuine shift in his approach at the crease post Pant’s arrival. Rahane batted with greater control, confidence and freedom because of how the game had been changed at the other end. This was evident even when Jadeja batted fluently with him.
If you are ‘Rahane' and going through a phase where each innings of yours attracts attention and scrutiny from the wider public, you need that much more support and breathing space. Aside of that 2018 tour of South Africa where they dropped him for two crucial Test matches, in Kohli and Shastri, Rahane is blessed to have had two great supporting pillars off the field. Kohli, especially, has wasted no opportunity to reiterate Rahane’s value to his team in the media. And that is with a good reason (which we’ll get to later).
After his debut in early 2013 till mid 2017, Rahane averaged 47.61 with 2,809 runs from 40 Tests. That was ‘Phase-1' of Rahane’s interesting career. Since then, in ‘Phase-2’, however, he is averaging 34.80 with 1,740 runs from 31 Tests. In Phase-1, Rahane was a free-flowing batsman, a dependable joint between the upper half of India’s batting and its lower half. In Phase-2, sadly, he’s been a struggler, hoping to break free from the shackles imposed on him. There’s a stark difference in Rahane’s batsmanship in these two periods. But that much is known; our quest here is to explore ‘why’? We’ll also try to dissect what’s behind India’s backing of him in this phase and then come back to our main aim as well. Along the way, let’s also understand Rahane’s home and away split.
Perhaps the most significant period in the journey of Rahane the batsman came just at the start of Phase-2. Following a disastrous home series versus Sri Lanka, he was left out of Test matches at Cape Town and Centurion. And though he made a winning contribution at Jo’burg, a loss in form was evident, which the team management had justified his non-selection with (I would’ve still played him those two Tests, though, and play him and Rohit together). Soon afterwards, he was made to believe he is India’s World Cup No.4 and just as same made to feel discarded after that South African one-day series. It’s since then Rahane hasn’t been the same. He lost his basic game and technique for a while. This was as much a result of a major dip in confidence as it was of having to juggle across formats and training accordingly. And though the technique has been somewhat restored, self-confidence has remained missing.
One direct result of that: Rahane is a bag of nervous energy at the start of his innings. Test match opponents sense these things quickly and don’t waste time to get on top of a player. What’s been interesting is that Rahane has used two extreme methods to counter his problem. He’s been either too frenetic or too careful; either too anxious to get going or too worried that he might get out. In an ESPNcricinfo piece written on the eve of ‘that' MCG Test, Sid Monga reinforced this quite nicely with numbers.
24 of Rahane’s 54 Test innings in Phase-2 have ended within 0–20 runs bracket. 14 of those innings have fetched him 50 or more runs. But the problem is accentuated with the frequency of innings between 21–50: there have been 16 such knocks. So not only has Rahane been a bad starter, he also hasn’t converted his starts enough, with only 3 hundreds. Rahane has always come across as a ‘batsman' who tends to let his failures play into his mind. And thus, it explains why he would be such a nervy starter in this phase of his career. But the fact that there have also been so many unconverted starts, means even when he is in, he is never really ‘in’ and feeling on top of the opponent.
I’ve seen Rahane bat closely within this period; I haven’t seen any major ‘technical' deficiency within his game. Yet, just to reaffirm my belief, I checked a breakdown of his dismissals in Phase-2. And, found out that, that it is indeed true. Only 11% of his innings have culminated in a bowled dismissal, with just 15% of them ending with an LBW. There have been, however, 65% of ‘caught' dismissals, including via the wicketkeeper, the bowler and other fielders. Lack of bowleds & LBWs means there isn’t any major issue with his defensive technique. The higher percentage of ‘caught’, though, says Rahane has had a tendency to try and force his way out of trouble; to take risks in order to break his shackles and has hit the ball in the air a lot, whether it is in front of the stumps or behind.
If not the technique, the dip in confidence it maybe, but most other batsmen are on the edge when they go through such a long phase without contributing consistently. Rahane, though, has enjoyed firm backing from his captain, the coach and the selectors. Rahane’s case is often compared with Asad Shafiq who, Pakistan fans say, wasn’t doing enough and yet was doing just enough to keep his place. But in the minds of Kohli and Shastri, Rahane has been key to some of their most resounding success, even within this phase. You think of knocks at Jo’burg, Trent Bridge, Adelaide, Jamaica, Ranchi, Melbourne and Chennai. And these aren’t fair-weather knocks played as filler in wins, they’ve been ones full of tough runs in difficult situations against competent attacks, acting as the catalyst to win. Proper impactful knocks.
These knocks make Rahane’s strange career all the more stranger. While on other days he appears a ‘walking wicket’, it’s when on song and playing such knocks he shows great temperament. You can’t play these knocks if you don’t possess a strong mind and be really unfazed of the difficulty of the challenge. The tag ‘impactful' hasn’t been associated with Rahane for just these handful knocks, though. He has had more. He averages 50.40 in overall 39 Test wins he has been part of; within Phase-2, that average is 51.00 in 19 Test wins. And so, while you would argue that Rahane ‘isn’t doing enough’, Kohli and Shastri would counter-argue and tell you he is India’s highest run-getter for the ongoing World Test Championship cycle or remind you that his MCG hundred was pivotal to only India’s second Test series win in Australia or just reinforce the value he brings as a vice-captain, an outstanding fieldsman and basically an experienced head Kohli can feed off when in need.
Beyond their impact, these knocks say there is still a lot of cricket left in Ajinkya Rahane. It’s a matter of him contributing more regularly, which is what the public desires. Perhaps if Rahane was simply piling on his stocks more days there wouldn’t be so much criticism over his spot. And the uproar isn’t at all helped by his home struggles. A lot of which are accentuated by his batting position in this Indian team and problems against spin.
Being a Mumbaikar and playing his home first-class fixtures on the red-soil tracks at Wankhede which offer spongy bounce, Rahane has grown up with an upright stance and has presumably faced more fast-bowling in those critical years of his development, including at training, than spin. For his Ranji Trophy team, Rahane batted mostly within the top-order, very rarely going down below No.3, before he progressed to the highest level and found that the only opening for him is in the lower middle-order. In India, at that spot, you face a lot of spin and face it with an old SG ball that softens up and goes through slow off the deck. No wonder all of Rahane’s 4 Test hundreds at home have come on occasions when he has walked out to bat before the 40th over. Even against pace, batsmen with an upright stance like Rahane tends to find tackling reverse-swing quite difficult as they aren’t the most comfortable crouching low and reverse-swing happens below the eyeline. Yet, as the numbers suggest, Rahane has managed well against pace at home; it’s the spinners that have had the wood over him.
And they’ve had a wood over him because he isn’t the most comfortable playing against them off the frontfoot. With Rahane not getting runs going forward to spin, I’ve noticed, he then tries to fetch them from the backfoot even of lengths that aren’t so short. We’ve all seen him get out trying to flick or cut the ball through the mid-wicket playing back to spinners. It’s this shot, I would advice, Rahane to cut down while playing in Indian conditions and not to be desperate for backfoot runs, basically play straight and play a cross-batted shot to only those lengths that are actually short of the 6m area. An experienced player like Rahane would know this, of course, but perhaps these errors happen instinctively at the start of his innings, when he is always shaky, remember?
Given everything, Rahane needs extra protection and cushion as a batsman, which brings me back to the ultimate aim of this write-up. I believe it’s time to try one last stroke before we even go around looking at other options and that is for an in-form Rishabh Pant to bat at №5 and bat ahead of Ajinkya Rahane who would then drop back to the position where he actually started, №6. This may seem a contradictory statement given Rahane’s home issues which I highlighted. But I reckon, overall, the more days you would set Rahane up for knocks like MCG the better it will be and that will happen when someone at the other end takes the onus of taking the game back to the opponent upon himself, force them to go on the defensive. Pant did it in that Boxing Day Test, something Rohit also did in the recent 2nd Test at Chepauk. One would think he already has that kind of cushion being sandwiched between Virat at №4 and Pant at №6, but it isn’t working right now, is it? And so, let’s try this out, who knows we maybe talking of Rahane differently in time? It isn’t a compromise of team combination for one person, it’s acknowledging the value an individual brings to the team and how he can perform at his best for the team. And it’s not those in the pink of health with their games who require such a cushion, it those like Rahane.
