Ajinkya Rahane’s low returns not a concern for us at the moment: Vikram Rathour

Team India batting Vikram Rathour is not too concern about vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane’s poor form in the ongoing England and India Test series. The right-hand batter registered scores of 14 and 0 in the fourth Test and has so far managed to score only one fifty in four Tests. He has also copped a fair bit of criticism and talks of him being removed from the team are growing louder each passing day.

But Rathour has said that Rahane is currently going through a lean patch and the team is not worried about it. Apart from the vice-captain, even Cheteshwar Pujara’s low scores were a concern for the team, but he responded brilliantly by scoring 91 and 61 and has returned to form. Rathour and the management are hoping Rahane, too, gets back to run-scoring ways sooner rather than later.

Rahane has currently scored only 109 runs in four Tests at a disappointing average of 15.57, which is also the lowest among the batters from the Indian team. Speaking at the post-day conference, Rathour said that everyone goes through such phases and that is the time when the players and support staff need to step up.

When you play cricket for such a long time, you’ll have such phases: Vikram Rathour

“Not at this point. As I have said earlier as well, when you play cricket for such a long time, you will have phases where you won’t get runs. That’s a time when as a team, you need to back them and support them as much as possible. We saw that with Pujara also, he got more opportunities and [made a] come back, he’s played a couple of important innings for us.”

“We are hoping that Ajinkya will also get back to form, and he’ll, you know, still play a major role in the Indian team’s batting. So, I don’t think we have arrived to that point where it should become a concern.”

Speaking about the ongoing fourth Test, the Oval pitch has not shown any signs of slowing down, and already the England opening batters Rory Burns and Haseeb Hameed have wiped out 77 from 368. Meanwhile, India will be hoping to get the remaining 10 wickets and look to take a lead in a five-match Test series.