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The cricketing world still vividly remembers how Ajinkya Rahane's lead India to a stunning victory in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2020-2021. After consuming a mountain of flak following India's 36 all-out in Adelaide Test, India staged a remarkable comeback and went on to seal the series against Australia under Rahane's captaincy despite missing Virat Kohli. Out of many heroes, Rahane was one of them.
But little did the Indian cricket fans knew that Rahane won't even find his name in India's squad for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-2025. The Mumbai-based batter inconsistent form in the longest format cost his place in the Team India set-up. Notably, after 2013, it will be first time Team India will be playing Border-Gavaskar Trophy without Rahane. Rahane played his first Border-Gavaskar Trophy in 2013. Nonetheless, the out-of-favour India's star batter isn't sitting idle in his tough times and grinding hard in the domestic cricket.
Meanwhile, right ahead of the upcoming Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024-2025, which will see a five-match Test battle between India and Australia, Rahane caught up in an exclusive interaction with Sports Tak and spoke his heart out.
The 36-year-old acknowledged BCCI's initiative to push domestic cricket and said that it is providing a big platform for cricketers. In it's landmark move BCCI recently made it mandatory for every player to play domestic cricket. Rahane also credited domestic cricket for everything he has achieved in his cricketing career so far. But the star batter, with 5077 Test runs, also admitted that it's not that easy to play domestic cricket.
"BCCI is doing a great job by pushing domestic cricket. Players comes from domestic cricket, and it's a big platform. Its not that' easy to play domestic cricket. When I play domestic, I am totally into it. When you play international cricket, your tactics and mindset is different but your attitude and intensity should be same," Ajinkya Rahane said in an exclusive interaction with Sports Tak.
Talking about Rahane's track record against Australia in Australia, in a total of 12 Tests, he has scored 884 runs at an average of 42.09, including two brilliant centuries. Notably, it was Rahane’s exceptional knock of 112 which helped India win the second Test against Australia in the 2020-21 BGT and level the series, which paved the patch for Men in Blue's historic series win in Gabba. India will certainly miss a batter like Rahane in the upcoming series against Australia, especially amidst the limping form of the likes of Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. Both Virat and Rohit had an ordinary outing in India's recent embarrassing Test series loss against New Zealand.
"Whatever have achieved is because of cricket I always try to learn till the time you are playing cricket when you stop learning your cricket is over whatever tournament I will play in future be it domestic or international i will always try to give my best," he added.
"Cricket is my love. Whatever I have achieved is just because of cricket. I played domestic cricket passionately before my international debut. It feels really great to represent Mumbai. When I was playing international cricket, whenever I get time. I used play domestic, so it's special," Rahane, who has 13688 First-Class runs under his belt, concluded.
Meanwhile, Indian team has reached Australia and is gearing for the all-important Border-Gavaskar Trophy which is set to start from November 22.
India’s squad for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy:
Rohit Sharma (C), Jasprit Bumrah (VC), Yashasvi Jaiswal, Abhimanyu Easwaran, Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, KL Rahul, Rishabh Pant (WK), Sarfaraz Khan, Dhruv Jurel (WK), R Ashwin, R Jadeja, Mohd. Siraj, Akash Deep, Prasidh Krishna, Harshit Rana, Nitish Kumar Reddy, Washington Sundar. Reserves: Mukesh Kumar, Navdeep Saini, Khaleel Ahmed
Australia's squad for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy:
Pat Cummins (c), Scott Boland, Alex Carey (wk), Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Usman Khawaja, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Mitch Marsh, Nathan McSweeney, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc (first Test only)
