5 reasons why Ajinkya Rahane is the most important member of the Test team

4. A perfect foil to Virat Kohli’s aggressive brand of captaincy

Every aggressive captain needs someone who can calm him down, help him with decision making-on and off the field and more importantly who understands him and his style of captaincy well. India is lucky to have found that with the Kohli - Rahane combination.

Rahane has found ways to assist Kohli on the field. Be it with setting the right fields for bowler or making the decisive bowling changes or helping out with DRS decisions, his importance is rather underplayed and not talked about much but the fact of the matter is without his quiet and silent support, Kohli wouldn’t have achieved this amount of success, something he himself has expressed in post-match interviews.

A recent example was seen in the Dharamshala test match between India and Australia, the deciding test in that series where the think-tank and coaching staff were in favour of picking an extra seamer as the pitch would assist fast bowlers.

But Kohli was of the opinion that playing the unknown left arm leg-spinner Kuldeep Yadav would be a better option as the Australian haven’t played him and he could pose a bigger threat.

That decision was strongly backed by Ajinkya Rahane and the results were positive as Kuldeep Yadav provided some crucial scalps which helped India beat Australia helping them clinch the hard fought series 2-1.