IND vs ENG: Ajinkya Rahane's lone but key contribution goes unnoticed

While opener Rohit Sharma may have grabbed the headlines thus far in the fourTest series between India and England with his attacking and matchdefining knocks Ajinkya Rahanes key contributions have gone rather unnoticedThe India No 5 who captained the team to a 21 series win in Australia after India suffered a heavy defeat in the first Test in Adelaide scored a fighting century at the Melbourne Cricket Ground MCG in the second Test to lead Indias revival He was also lauded for his captaincy throughout the seriesHe has not been able to replicate that performance since the MCG Test with the bat partly because of the difficult pitches India have been playing on However he still managed to produce a crucial innings during the second Test in Chennai where he scored 67 with Sharma at the other end and helped steer India to a strong total after the early loss of wicketsAfter losing the first Test India were reduced to 86 for three in the first session of the second Test on a wicket helping spin bowlers But Sharma and Rahane added 162 runs for the fourth wicket to help India take commandThat partnership changed the momentum of the seriesSince his 112 and 27 not out at the MCG Rahane made 22 4 37 and 24 in Australia followed by 1 0 67 10 and 7 in IndiaThe 24 at the Gabba was a counterattacking knock to set India on course for a 329run chase Former India batsman and Rahanes batting coach Pravin Amre said that contributing in a win is equally importantBatting hasnt been easy You can see that not many hundreds have been scored he told IANS on SundayNo Indian player has managed to hit a century in the past eight Test matches apart from Rahane in Melbourne and Sharma and Ravichandran Ashwin during the second Test against England in ChennaiThat lesser number of centuries means that it isn not easy to bat We can say that the second Test knock was important especially his partnership with Rohit You can contribute in success It is not that you have to always get big scores to be qualified as a success Amre saidIndia captain Virat Kohli had earlier backed Rahane after his twin failures in the first Test against EnglandIt is just one Test two innings Today you can put that innings aside but in the first innings he wanted to score a boundary It was a brilliant catch from Joe Root that got rid of him So if that went to the boundary and he got runs we would not have been having this conversation There are absolutely no issues everyone is playing really well Kohli had saidThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever