‘I was a regular feature in ODI cricket, but was suddenly dropped’: Ajinkya Rahane

India batter Ajinkya Rahane has said that the dip in his form has to do with him playing just one format and with covid pandemic upending domestic cricket, that has only further affected his preparations and the result is evident in his scores at international level. Rahane, who been pigeonholed as a Test specialist since 2018, now has been battling form in the format for some time now and there have been calls for him to be dropped to give more chances to youngsters.

Explaining his predicament, Rahane says there’s been no Ranji Trophy for the past two seasons and no matter how much practice one does, it cannot be equated with match practice.

“Sometimes, the reality is, when you play only one format and especially in the last 2-3 years where there is no Ranji cricket and no other domestic games, I think that needs to be taken into account because you can’t score runs sitting at home,” Rahane said on Backstage with Boria.

“No matter how much you practice or have net sessions, the confidence will not be gained with that. Confidence comes with game time and scoring runs in matches,” he added.

Rahane also touched on the fact that he was dropped from the ODIs ‘suddenly’ despite doing well. The 33-year-old last played one-day cricket for India in 2018 during the South Africa tour when they won the six-match series 5-1.

Rahane had struck five consecutive half-centuries between September 21 (2017) and February 1 (2018) followed by scores of 11, 8, 8 and 34* before being dropped from ODIs.

“Before that (February 2018), I was playing ODI cricket continuously for Team India and I was doing really well. Suddenly, I got dropped, I don’t want to go into that, I don’t want to go into my past but the reality is I was playing well in 2014, 15, 16, and 17. ODI and Test cricket both were going really well. After that I hardly got game time, there was a huge gap between Test matches,” Rahane said.