 "Ajinkya Rahane")
The highly traditional dressing room of Lord's resembled a bachelor's party hall on a July evening nearly a year ago. India had just beaten England in the most-storied cricket ground after a gap of 28 years. There were two stars: Ajinkya Rahane and Ishant Sharma. Rahane warded off the English bowlers with a fighting hundred, while Ishant rattled the hosts' batsmen with a seven-wicket haul. Each deserved a full crate of champagne.
But Rahane found time and space to have a few moments of his own. Duncan Fletcher was his companion. They stood at the balcony deep in conversation. Then they walked towards the pitch for a more animated session. No one was privy to their discussion. But a spy job was not necessary to understand their topic. It was undoubtedly batting as revealed by the occasional movements of Rahane and Fletcher.
So, what was the urgency for Rahane to seek Fletcher's help on a victorious day? He could have partied as long as he wished. He could have spent an entire night with his teammates or friends without caring for cricket or the three remaining Tests. No one would have blamed him. After all, not too many Indian batsmen have had the fortune to etch their name on the Lord's honours board, and that too in a winning cause.
But that would not have been Rahane. That July 21 showed the core of Rahane. All he cares for is cricket. You can even trace an obsessive perfectionist in him. Victory and defeat for him are mere by-products of a journey that is devoted to cricket. Just taste this. Rahane, incidentally, played the first 10 ODIs of his career against England in the vastly different terrains of the Old Blighty and the Indian sub-continent. All he had to show from those outings was two fifites in Southampton and Mohali.
Steven Finn had exposed a few chinks in the armour of Jinks (his pet name) with those sharp incoming deliveries. A few weeks later, Peter Siddle softened him at Feroze Shah Kotla with a barrage of bouncers, one of them pinged on his helmet. He was rattled, and got out to spinners Nathan Lyon and Glenn Maxwell in that match. The giant who scored a bucketful of runs in domestic cricket was dwarfed. However, Rahane was far from defeated. He came back to Praveen Amre, the former India player and now a much-sought after batting coach across India.
"Rahane is a tough person. Importantly, setbacks cannot douse his spirit. He learns from them and moves on. He tries to be a better batsman on each outing, each practice session," says Amre. "He amazes me with his desire to improve. He always tries to talk on cricket in an effort to correct even the minute technical issues before and after every series."
Rahane's hard work paid off. The Mumbaikar experienced success in conditions as varied as in South Africa, New Zealand and England. Rahane tamed Dale Steyn, Trent Boult, James Anderson and Stuart Broad, all premier pace bowlers of their respective teams, in places he did not have much experience. Suddenly, Finn was forgotten. Siddle was a distant memory. Rahane was the new Mr Dependable.
It was heady personal success, particularly for someone at the nascent stage of his international career. After 10 Tests, he has more away hundreds than Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and VVS Laxman had at the corresponding stages of their careers. Amre was not surprised.
"Rahane has been coming to me for the last seven years. We have worked many times on his technique. But what impresses me more is his mental strength and the large heartedness to accept the fact that he has still a lot of work to do as a batsman. He is willing to do that," says Amre.
His desire to get better at T20 cricket offers a fine example. The right-handed batsman has always had the timing and the ability to send the ball to the ropes with minimum effort. But he has another beast to shackle. T20 cricket. In the ultra-abridged version of cricket, timing could fetch runs only that much. In that form, a batsman would require power to clear the boundaries regularly. By no means, Rahane is a natural power-hitter like Shikhar Dhawan or Mahendra Singh Dhoni. So, he needed to find ways to inject more power into his shots.
Rahane and Amre resorted to baseball training for that. "We worked on many aspects - how he will approach the match if he is opening, or what will be his mindset when he is batting in the lower order or when there is a six to be hit off the last ball. In T20 power hitting matters a lot. Instead of using just the arms and shoulders when he strikes the ball, I told him to use his entire core to hit the ball. It worked for him," says Amre.
Rahane is undoubtedly an ambitious cricketer. But he remains a person rooted to his middle-class values and devoted to his family and friends - old and new. While in Mumbai, he never misses a chance to visit the Siddhivinayak Temple to offer prayers to his favourite deity, a routine he began in his teens. "Those elements (fame and money) are fickle. Only your family and friends will stay with you forever," Rahane said once in a short interaction.
You will hardly find him in party spots when the Indian team is touring. Some of his team mates would be letting their hair down on dance floors or in music halls. But Rahane prefers a much quieter time in the room or in a good dining place with his family or friends. He hardly belongs to the showman category. The tough Mumbai suburban life that he had to go through in his teens taught him not to get carried away by success and fame.
Rahane did not spend the budding stages of his cricket career inside the relative plush interiors of an academy. He was one of the thousands of kids who aspired to grow into a Sunil Gavaskar or a Sachin Tendulkar from the maidans of Mumbai. You will not get a freebie in those maidans. The weak-minded and less skilled would be pushed behind mercilessly. That background, perhaps, explains Rahane's approach towards batting and life.
A few weeks ago, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, India's ODI skipper, made a rather harsh assessment of Rahane during India's series against Bangladesh. Dhoni stated that Rahane struggled to rotate strike in the middle overs. Rahane never cringed and took the feedback positively, focusing on getting better. As usual, he turned to Amre to finetune his game.
But Rahane's profile has changed. He is now the Indian captain for the short ODI series against Zimbabwe. This time the preparation included some high-tech methods like cognitive training, adopted from football. The session with Amre was not held in the sultry atmosphere of the maidans but in the state-of-the-art indoor nets at the Bandra Kurla Complex.
But Rahane may not be giving too much attention to his new position or what is expected of him. For him, this would simply mean another chance to become a better cricketer and a person.
