Rahane buries Kotla ghost in tough conditions

The last time Ajinkya Rahane played a Test in Delhi he was a nervous youngster debuting on a square turner. He had got there after scoring heavily, and after long resistance had managed to get past the preference for anyone but him: flashier batsmen, batsmen returning from injury, batsmen over the hill; even Ravindra Jadeja had got in ahead of him. It was understandable he was nervous; this debut had just taken too long coming. He played two shots befitting a nervous debutant, the second one under no pressure of the match situation, and we were left wondering if he had blown his chance because he was dropped for the Tests against West Indies later in that year, 2013.

Then India embarked on a testing spell of 13 straight Tests outside Asia and four more outside India. Sachin Tendulkar had just retired. The timing of that retirement, not letting the replacement bed in during home Tests, was unfortunate, but you can't say Tendulkar planned it that way. He must have been confident he could make it to South Africa too. At any rate this left Rahane with a big challenge: you want to get yourself a Test spot, do it in these testing conditions.

In the 17 Tests that he played away from home, Rahane succeeded on every tour. He missed a hundred in Durban by four runs, scored one in Wellington, went on to score a match-winning hundred at Lord's, surprised the aggressive Virat Kohli with his aggressive batting in Australia, which took some heat off the future captain, and piled on top of them a second-innings hundred in Sri Lanka.

Rahane's biggest challenge of conditions, though, came at home when India chose to play on rank turners to negate the might of AB de Villiers and Hashim Amla. They were prepared to pay collaterals, for which they deserve their due credit. The biggest price was perhaps paid by Rahane, coming in at No. 5 by which time the ball has scuffed up and starts to turn even more. He also has to score runs with the lower middle order, considering he was the last specialist batsman in the first Test. Coming to Delhi, Rahane averaged under eight at home.

It is easy to make a flawed argument that only one of four Rahane's dismissals was down to the pitch, when a half-volley found enough time to stop at him and take the edge. On two other occasions he had played without reaching the pitch of the spin and once played a loose drive to Morne Morkel. Rahane was making mistakes on tough pitches. It is ironic that Rahane was having his first poor series at home. Was. In his last chance, Rahane has turned it around, at the venue that might have had some demons for him.

To add to the demons from the debut was India's position in the game. At 66 for 3, on a pitch that played easier than Nagpur or Mohali, India needed a big effort from somewhere. Rahane came in determined. It helped that Kohli looked in great touch. Along with certain periods in de Villiers' innings in Bangalore, Kohli looked the most authoritative a batsman has looked this series. Rahane could afford to bed in a little inconspicuously.

"I think what has been happening in the past two Test matches was that he was slightly hurrying through his shots earlier on in his innings," batting coach Sanjay Bangar said. "But he reworked his strategy a bit and is willing to spend time in the middle during initial stages waiting for the loose balls. All credit to Ajinkya for the way he turned out after first two games with low scores to turn things around for himself. It speaks a lot about his character, speaks a lot about the character young Indian batsmen possess."

There seemed another small change, which batsmen usually make on pitches with variable bounce: stay low, cover the low bounce, have a low back lift. When preparing to face spinners here, Rahane hardly took his bat up. The tap on the pitch as the bowler ran in came from a much lower height than it did earlier.

While Rahane was looking to take his time early on, he was lucky he got two loose balls pretty early. Two boundaries hit in the first 22 balls he faced - off a short ball and a full toss - and Rahane looked in for the long haul. The responsibility, though, grew after the freak dismissal of Kohli after more than an hour of the most assertive all-round batting in this series. Two more wickets fell soon, as they tend to do on such pitches, and India were 139 for 6.

At Lord's, on a similarly testing pitch, India were 145 for 7 once. Rahane was on 28 then, he was on 31 now. He spent 16 balls on that score. Between Kohli's dismissal and this spell, he had scored one run in 22 balls. This is the time of his innings when Rahane likes to flow freely. Here a combination of the team situation and a testing pitch asked for caution. He had paid the price for pulling the trigger too early in the series, he wasn't going to do that now.

At Lord's, Rahane got support from Bhuvneshwar Kumar, and here Jadeja provided him solidarity. Thanks to Imran Tahir's inconsistency, South Africa's three-man attack had to wilt at some time. Smart Rahane kept his back lift short until the fingers grew tired in the longest session of the day. And then he punished every error in length severely. What was more remarkable was his defence, and his being prepared to defend, until such bad deliveries arrived.

Rahane now has the highest individual score of the series. Thanks to him India have posted the highest total of the series, and his average in India is past 22 now. That absolute failure of a series, which looked likely, can wait despite such tough conditions.