Often in the midst of a robust crowd the sedate footsteps flounder. They either have to break their steps to match the frenzy or take a backwards stride to watch the clamour pass by.
Something eerily similar is having with Ajinkya Rahane, India’s Test vice-captain and one the mainstays in the batting order when it comes down to T20 cricket. He is aesthetic, he is beautiful and his strokeplay yells out disdain, but then towards the end more often than not he starts huffing and puffing and when the eventual numbers surface, he looks like a lost soul in the boisterous crowd.
When he strides out to bat there is sense of purpose and grit stamped all over his approach. He has the strokes to put even the best fast bowlers to the sword and he does it time and again. During the powerplays, he takes full flight and with his pristine timing and the ability to find gaps more often than not, he wows the audience with his dapper stroke play.
However, he is no Chris Gayle and is not entirely a muscular man and this is where the problem lies. Once the field restrictions are done away with, he gets down to picking up singles and this is where it becomes difficult for him and his team. His overall strike rate in the IPL is 121 and this season it goes up few paces at 123.49. While these numbers are nothing to be ashamed of, T20 has exponentially changed and this demands the batsmen to notch up strike rates in excess of 130.
Factor this: His overall strike rate in IPL is 121.26 is just better than Jacques Kallis (109.22) and Shikhar Dhawan (120.83) for batsmen in the list top 20 run scorers in IPL.
While on hand scoring boundaries are paramount in T20 cricket, soaking up dot balls is considered to be criminal and Rahane has been guilty of facing too many balls without any runs.
His dot ball per cent is around 28% which is the one of the highest among openers playing in the IPL. Apart from this, he tends to go out of steam in T20 rather quickly, which is what one does not expect from a quality player.
Not very long ago, MS Dhoni who was then the Indian ODI captain had raised concerns about the versatility of Rahane as a batsman across formats and he was also benched citing strike rate issues and his ability to rotate strikes during the middle overs, especially when the spinners come on to bowl and pace is taken off the ball.
This problem seems to have persisted and currently, Rahane is standing at crossroads with respect to his future in Limited Overs International. With an injury to KL Rahul, the opening slot is wide open and players like Shikhar Dhawan and Ajinkya Rahane will be keen to throw in their hat.
There is so much to like in Rahane, but he has to recognise the fact that there is an issue with his game which needs to be sorted out, and it needs to be done quickly!
