MUMBAI, INDIA: They don’t make men like Ajinkya Rahane anymore. It is characteristic of the man, and symbolic of the ethics by which he played his cricket – of staying away from the limelight – that he chose to announce his retirement from cricket in the midst of a hectic Commonwealth Games campaign for India, ensuring that he would not get more than a few inches of newsprint.
He arrived without the glitz and the glamour that the tattoos of his colleagues so arrogantly stole, and he departed without the fanfare that would have been his by right thanks to being the best Test captain India barely had. India never lost a match with Rahane as skipper. And yet, what he achieved during the 2020-21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy was merely an appellation of what he could truly conceive.
The heroics of the 2020-21 Border-Gavaskar Trophy
Taking over the reins after India were infamously bowled out for 36, their lowest-ever Test score, in the first Test in Adelaide, the Mumbaikar led India to a whopping eight-wicket victory in the second, in Melbourne, and marked it with a special century himself. India would eventually go on to lift the series 2-1, departing from their usual storyline of being embarrassed Down Under.
That story is one worth telling. India, in the aftermath of their worst-ever performance with the bat in Test cricket, were deserted by their captain Virat Kohli, who left for India, ostensibly to be with his wife Anushka Sharma – a hugely successful actress and wealthy businesswoman – ahead of the birth of his child.
Ajinkya Rahane, ever the trusted lieutenant, remained unflustered, regrouped the side with his typical steel and dignity, and mounted one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the sport. In Indian cricket’s time of need, he showed why he was, like his predecessors Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman, a gentleman who could be relied on at all times. And just like Dravid and Laxman, Ajinkya Rahane remained a cricketer first, and an athlete second.
Ajinkya Rahane was a true successor of Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman
Growing up on the outskirts of Bombay (now Mumbai), Rahane idolised and hoped to emulate these two extremely distinguished gentlemen. Now that he has walked into the sunset, they are expected to doff their hats and applaud him for the values he brought with him, and the honesty he perpetuated from their hallowed names.
And just like them, Ajinkya Rahane achieved more success abroad than he did in India. Every time the Men in Blue needed someone to stand up when the ball swung more than it should, or bounced more than it was known to, Rahane put his hand up to take the challenge head-on. Like Dravid and Laxman, Rahane would have walked on broken glass for his team had he been asked to do so.
Only 1,644 of the 5,077 runs Ajinkya Rahane scored in Test cricket came in India; merely four out of his 12 centuries were compiled in his homeland. He scored two each in Australia, Sri Lanka and the West Indies, but it was his maiden ton (118) in Wellington, New Zealand in 2014 that earmarked him as one for the future. Naturally, just like his encapsulating predecessors, Rahane was known largely as a man for a crisis.
Not just a red-ball specialist
Despite being clubbed as a red-ball specialist, Ajinkya Rahane was no one-trick pony. He evolved his white-ball game throughout his career, even playing 90 ODIs and 20 T20Is for India, and scoring three centuries and 24 half-centuries in the former. But what signified his desire to move with the times was the way in which he evolved himself as a pinch-hitter for Kolkata Knight Riders in the IPL, finishing with 390 runs at 147.72 in 2025.
In what would be his final season in white-ball cricket, for the same franchise, he moved out of his comfort zone, playing across the line while opening the innings and using his feet against the seamers to disrupt their lengths. As a result, he ended IPL 2026 with 335 runs at a strike rate of 135.08, making his bow with a well-crafted 63 off just 39 deliveries at the Eden Gardens, albeit in a losing cause.
No memory remains as fresh for this correspondent as the composed 114 Ajinkya Rahane scored for Mumbai against Rajasthan in the Vijay Hazare Trophy at the Gymkhana Ground in Hyderabad in December 2015. Despite having come back from India duty to play domestic cricket, he took no bowler for granted, using his feet efficiently while respecting the good deliveries and punishing the bad.
It was not the 85 Tests that Ajinkya Rahane played, or the 12 centuries he scored in them, that made him stand apart from his colleagues; it was the class, grace and civility that he brought onto the crease every time he walked out to bat. And with his departure, we have now seen the end of an era in which men still treated the sport as it was meant to be – a gentleman’s domain, and not a bullring.
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