The former Indian test vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane has showered praise on the new Indian captain Rohit Sharma, saying that he backs his players a lot and gives them a lot of confidence even when they are going through a bad phase. This comment from Rahane is surprising because Rahane has never played a single international game under the captaincy of Rohit.
Even when Rohit Sharma stood in as the temporary skipper whenever Virat Kohli was injured or unavailable for some reason in the past, he stood in for white-ball teams and Rahane was not a part of those teams. It is, in fact, the other way around where Rahane captained a few test matches in absence of Kohli and Rohit Sharma played under his captaincy.
When Virat Kohli was the captain of the Indian team, there were a lot of rumours and stories circulating that a communication gap was there between the players and the management and the players who were going through a lean patch didn’t have any role clarity from the management. They felt isolated.
Ajinkya Rahane, while speaking on Boria Majumdar’s show Backstage with Boria, made many eyebrow raising remarks and from quite a few of his remarks, it seemed as if he, himself, was not happy with the previous Indian team management. Now, his endorsement of Rohit Sharma, who is in line to become India’s all-format captain, is again interesting, and it also suggests that perhaps everything was not smooth in the Indian camp a few months back.
Test future of Ajinkya Rahane will be decided by the new Indian team management
It remains to be seen what kind of decisions Rohit Sharma takes with regard to the test team of India if he is indeed given the test captaincy as well. Rohit, in a recent press conference, however, made it very clear that he is not really thinking about test captaincy and his focus is on white-ball cricket.
Apart from Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul is another player who is understood to be in the plans of the selectors as another possible option for test captaincy. The decision will perhaps be taken by the selectors before the Sri Lanka test series in consultation with the head coach and the BCCI office-bearers.
Ajinkya Rahane himself would have been in a very strong position to take over the test captaincy after Virat Kohli’s resignation if he was in good form with the bat.
Here is @ajinkyarahane88 on @ImRo45 #BackstageWithBoria @AgeasFederal pic.twitter.com/M9ZNlKjt74
— Boria Majumdar (@BoriaMajumdar) February 10, 2022
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