India vs Australia | Ajinkya Rahane and the art of rising to the occasion

Bengaluru, December 29: The easiest line of thinking was that how unfortunate Ajinkya Rahane could be coming to the second Test against Australia at Melbourne. Rahane took over as the captain after Virat Kohli left for India on paternity leave.

But not before seeing his side crashing to 36 for 9, and then to an eight-wicket defeat at Adelaide in the Pink Ball Test. Rahane lost the services of Mohammed Shami even before the Test, and Umesh Yadav to calf injury mid Test. Then Rahane had to manage Shubman Gill and Mohammad Siraj, the Test debutants.

In only Hollywood movies, perhaps, you can see such relentless onslaught of calamities for a leader to negate. But Rahane hardly looked a man walking through turmoil, managing the available resources brilliantly.

As a captain, Rahane pushed all the right buttons. We are not sure whether Ashwin has this designated role to contain Steve Smith, the nemesis of India. But once Smith came to bat in Australia's first innings, Rahane was quick to hand over the ball to the veteran off-spinner.

It did not matter the innings was just 10-over-old and the ball was new. All it mattered on that occasion was best vs best. Ashwin repaid Rahane with Smith's wicket, a result of clever bowling and Smith's own nervous urgency to score runs, four overs later.

Rahane the captain was so sure of the tactics to be employed. There was no unfamiliarity with the situation or the job at hand. It was for a reason Ashwin said Rahane has brought calmness to the side that was reeling from 36/9, departure of regular captain and loss of key players.

"Getting bowled out for 36 was never going to be easy. We are quite a proud cricketing country and losing Virat was a bit of a setback," he told 7 cricket.

"But we stuck on really well. Jinks' calmness in the dressing room really provided us that stability to go out there and express ourselves in this game," he added.

Rahane the batsman too found himself in such a situation. The Indian bowlers had done a brilliant job of bowling out Australia to a sub-200 total in the first innings, and India needed a substantial lead to keep the needle of pressure in the hosts' corner.

However, Australia were slowly pushing that needle back to India with the quick wickets of Mayank Agarwal, Shubman Gill and Cheteshwar Pujara inside 65 runs. Rahane is, perhaps, the best man for such pushed-to-the-wall moments in this line-up, as there will be no sign of nerves as he goes about his job at his own pace and by his methods.

He kept India ticking with Hanuma Vihari and Rishabh Pant and took the team ahead of the Aussies with an equally feisty Ravindra Jadeja. The pace of his innings was superbly calculated, strike-rate of 50.22 for a hundred against this Australian attack tells Rahane's ability to assess the situation and adapt to it.

Once the early caution saw him through the storm of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood, Rahane matched Pant for strokes and then outpaced Jadeja, giving India the advantage at MCG which they did not allow to slip away this time.

It was a lesson too for others in the side, and Gill said as much. "His knock was all about patience. When you are playing such a high-quality bowling attack, sometimes you go into a shell and not able to score runs. The way Ajinkya bhai played, it was such a magnificent knock to watch. How to see off those tough periods and then making sure to put all the loose balls away," Gill gushed.

Rahane did not go into a shell. More importantly, he did not allow the team to go into a shell. He ensured that the memories of 36/9 were erased from the hard disk inside their heads. It was a fresh Test and Indians approached it with fresh minds too.

"It would've been easy for us to get bogged down thinking about Adelaide, but we decided not to do that. The message was to give a collective effort of individuals and we knew, we'd get the results if we did that," Rahane summed up the Test in the post-match presentation.

It was one of those beautiful moments in sports when a team and its captain were so much in sync with each other. It has given this series a more competitive angle too.