India and Australia are ready for the World Test Championship (WTC) Final 2023. The summit clash for the coveted trophy is set to begin at the Kia Oval in London on June 7. Having faced each other earlier this year in the Border-Gavaskar series, India came on the top for the fourth straight time, gaining a psychological advantage over the mighty Aussies.
Ahead of the marquee clash, head coach of the Indian cricket team Rahul Dravid evaluated India’s preparations and playing depth. Dravid has been closely supervising the team’s practice sessions and is leaving no stone unturned to ensure that his players get used to the English conditions. One of the players whose performance Dravid is looking forward to witness is of the comeback man and middle-order batter Ajinkya Rahane.
The right-hander was dropped from the Test team in 2022 following an extended lean patch, but he had a decent Ranji Trophy 2022-23 season, amassing 634 runs from seven games at an average of 57.63 while leading Mumbai. Injuries to Shreyas Iyer and KL Rahul resulted in Rahane getting selected for the Test team after a wide gap of 18 months.
Rahane is likely to feature in India’s playing XI for the WTC final, and a failure in the one-off game could potentially be his last. But Dravid feels that Rahane shouldn’t look at the opportunity as a “one-off”.
Firstly it’s good to have him. We’ve had a few injuries which have probably led to him having the opportunity to come back into the squad. Great for us to have someone of his quality back,” Dravid said while addressing the media on Monday.
“He brings obviously a lot of that experience, he brings proven performance in overseas conditions. Even in England he’s played some terrific innings for us. He brings terrific catching in the slips as well to the group. He just brings his personality to the group as well which is really important. He’s led the team to considerable success. And again, I wouldn’t want him to approach this as just a one-off,” Dravid added.
The Karnataka stalwart further said that Rahane could play more matches if he performs well for India.
“Sometimes you get dropped from teams and you make a comeback and you can play for as long as you’re playing well and as long as you’re performing. It’s not written in stone or rule that you only get one match. He puts in a good performance, really shows what he’s got. Who knows, even when people come back from injury, you never know what can happen. So again, from my point of view, it’s not really only about this match. Yes this match is important but then in the larger context of things there’s a lot of cricket to be played further down the road as well,” the coach said.
Notably, Rahane has stormed back into the reckoning on the back of his impressive performances in domestic cricket as well as his sensational show in the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2023. He scored 326 runs with a strike-rate of 172.49 in the recent season of IPL.
