"Pujji-Virat and my averages have come down" - Ajinkya Rahane cites Indian pitches as reason behind downfall 

Senior batter Ajinkya Rahane believes that the nature of Indian pitches in the last few years have played a significant part in the poor runs of form of India's middle-order batters. Apart from the Mumbai-born batter, Cheteshwar Pujara and Virat Kohli too have suffered a massive dip in form over the course of the last couple of years.

Ajinkya Rahane is reportedly not in the scheme of things, particularly with Shreyas Iyer adapting well to the No. 5 slot. The right-handed batter also risks losing his central contract after last playing for the national team during the tour of South Africa at the beginning of the year.

His last set of home Tests came against New Zealand and England, in 2021, at home. Barring a fifty in the second Test against England on a testing surface in Chennai, Rahane does not have much to show for. The same could arguably be said for his middle-order compatriots.

However, Cheteshwar Pujara was able to muster a comeback on the back of an impressive county stint with Sussex midway through the year. Rahane, on the other hand, had a poor Indian Premier League (IPL) 2022 campaign with the Kolkata Knight Riders.

Noting that the batters did not commit glaring mistakes leading to the fall in average, Rahane said in an interaction with the Indian Express:

“There was no mistake (in his style of batting that his average dipped), we were playing in India for the last three years. If you look at the players who are batting at number three, four, or five, their average has come down because of the wickets. Pujji-Virat (Pujara, Kohli) and my averages have come down."

He continued:

"I don’t think there were many mistakes. It’s not every time that we are committing the mistakes. Sometimes the wickets are such, this is no excuse but everyone saw the kind of wickets we had in India."

Rahane's last knock of notice came during the 2020 Boxing Day Test at Melbourne, in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy. On that occasion, he led from the front, as captain of the side, with a memorable century to help India bounce back from the shattering loss in the previous Test, at Adelaide.

Ajinkya Rahane's average plummeted to 19 across eight innings in the 2020-21 season, while in the subsequent season, it has barely risen to 21.87. A similar trend could be observed for Pujara and Kohli, but the duo have made significant strides when it comes to their form of late.

"I don’t want to prove anything but one thing is sure, I will never give up" - Ajinkya Rahane

Ajinkya Rahane is now actively involved in the domestic circuit after being dropped from the Indian side almost altogether. He is currently leading the Mumbai team in the 2022-23 Ranji Trophy season. H

e scored 44 runs in the season-opening win over Andhra, but ramped it up with a stellar double-century in the second and ongoing match against Hyderabad.

Noting that the opening batters have it relatively easy when compared to the middle-order batters, Ajinkya Rahane said:

“As a batsman, it is always challenging, especially if you are batting as a middle-order [batsman]. For openers, it’s easy. It’s because of a hard ball but when a batsman gets out, we tend to think where did we do wrong.”

He concluded:

"I don’t want to prove anything but one thing is sure, I will never give up. I have scored whenever the team wanted to in crucial positions and we have won the games. Double ton is special, the way I was timing the ball. The way I wanted to, it has gone that way. I thought about my old innings of under-19 and Ranji Trophy. I want to go as close to that.”

Mumbai amassed a mammoth first innings total of 651/6 on the back of the skipper's double ton. Sarfaraz Khan also recorded a hundred while Suryakumar Yadav marked his return to red-ball cricket with an impactful 90-run knock.

Will Ajinkya Rahane ever feature in the national team again? Let us know what you think.