Making a slightly surprising statement in the post-match press conference earlier today, the Indian captain Virat Kohli said that he is not in a position to judge the batting form of Ajinkya Rahane and only the player himself knows if he is batting well or not.
Ajinkya Rahane was not a part of the Indian playing XI in the second test match against New Zealand and while the official statement was that he was out because of injury, he was in line to be dropped from the playing XI anyway because of the lack of runs under his belt.
Virat Kohli, however, doesn’t seem convinced that Rahane is out of form. According to Kohli, a player needs backing when he goes through a patch where runs are not easy to come by, particularly if the player has scored runs in the past and in important moments.
“I can’t judge his (Rahane’s) form. No one can judge. We need to back them in these moments, especially when they have done well in the past,” Kohli said in the post-match press conference.
Kohli refused to pay too much attention to his own lack of big scores as well, insisting that there is the possibility of a technical issue only if a player is repeatedly getting dismissed in the same manner. If the mode of dismissals is not the same when it comes down to playing 60-70 balls at the start of the innings.
Ajinkya Rahane is competing with Shreyas Iyer and Shubman Gill for a middle-order spot on the SA tour
It is now interesting if Rahane gets back into the playing XI for the first test against South Africa or India persists with Shreyas Iyer, who scored a hundred in his debut test match. Kohli didn’t give any clear answer to the middle order conundrum, either.
When asked if Shreyas Iyer and Shubman Gill are now ahead of Ajinkya Rahane in the middle order pecking order, the Indian captain simply said those kind of questions couldn’t be answered in the press conferences. It’s something that the team management will have to sit together and discuss, taking everybody’s ideas on board.
