Watch: Out-Of-Favour Ajinkya Rahane Posts Batting Videos Hours After India’s Thumping Test Loss

Ajinkya Rahane has posted a short video of him training hours after India’s record defeat to South Africa at Centurion.

The Centurion test was notable for a number of reasons. India’s defeat further boosted their hopes of a first series win in South Africa, but also dashed their hopes of reaching the World Test Championship final for the third consecutive year. It was also the first time since Adelaide in 2011-12 that India fielded a Test team without Ajinkya Rahane or Cheteshwar Pujara in an overseas Test match.

For much of the last decade, the pair have been the mainstay of India’s mid-order, batting at number three and five around Virat Kohli, who usually plays at number four. However, since the start of 2020, Rahane has averaged 25.39 in Test cricket. His Pujara average of 29.69 during this period is not that great.

Pujara, 35, was dropped after India lost this year’s World Test Championship final. Rahane, in which he scored 89 runs, was ruled out after scoring his second single-digit score in India’s tour of the Caribbean.

Pujara has effectively been replaced by Yashasvi Jaiswal. The young left-hander has risen to the top of the rankings, which has pushed Shubman Gill to third place. Gill’s own recent form has raised questions about his place within the team. Rahane, on the other hand, was usurped by Shreyas Iyer and made an encouraging start to his Test career, albeit primarily in familiar Asian surroundings.

Rahine posted a training video to his 6.7 million X (formerly Twitter) followers the morning after India’s defeat against Centurions. The game against Centurions was South Africa’s worst ever loss, giving up 32 runs in one innings. Was it an oversight on his part? We’ll never know, but Rahane is, at best, a rare poster boy for the X.

This is the second time in 2023 that he has posted a video of himself hitting the X, the last time being on the eve of the World Cup final. He posted a similar video on December 11, 2022. This is his three days before India’s first Test in Bangladesh, another tour in which Rahane was not selected.

You can watch the video of Ajinkya Rahane batting in the nets below: