Veteran batter Ajinkya Rahane announced his retirement from all forms of the game on Thursday. The 38-year-old took to his Instagram handle and announced his decision in an emotional video. The batter ended up with 8414 runs from 195 international matches with a total of 15 centuries and 51 half-centuries.
Former India batter and Mumbai teammate Wasim Jaffer praised the now-retired star for his achievement. The 48-year-old said that Rahane will also be sad to have ended his career with fewer numbers than he would have hoped for. Jaffer took to his YouTube channel to speak about his former teammate’s career.
“Knowing him as well as I do, and having played so much cricket with Rahane, I feel he could have achieved more. In the number of Tests he played, he could have scored somewhere close to 7000 runs. He could have also ended his career with more than 20 Test centuries.”
For the record, the batter had 12 centuries in the longest format of the game. His best of 188 came against New Zealand in the 2016 Indore Test. The former Kolkata Knight Riders skipper made his first-class debut for Mumbai against Karachi Urban and scored 143 off 207 balls with 28 hits to the fence and added 247 for the opening wicket with Sahil Kukreja.
Jaffer also praised the batter and said, “Rahane was an excellent servant for India, dedicated and hardworking, similar to Rahul Dravid in his time. To play 85 Test matches and score over 5000 runs is an amazing achievement.” Many former teammates, including Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, and Cheteshwar Pujara, lauded the former batter for his distinguished career.
Ex-India batter calls retired player a wonderful ambassador
Having made his Test debut in 2013, the former Chennai Super Kings star became a mainstay of the batting unit. During the course of his decade-long Test career, the right-handed batter played a few key innings for the side and also led them in six Tests and went on to win four. Two of those came in Melbourne and Brisbane, where India won the series in 2020/21 under his captaincy.
“Ajinkya played a few remarkable innings, one of which was at Lord’s, one in Melbourne, then the century in each innings in Delhi, as well as the one with Virat Kohli during the 2014 MCG Test. He was a great ambassador of the game, and a fantastic role model for young players. He could have ended his career with an average of 45 or even 50. As a player, he went about his business quietly and didn’t attract attention. He was a key player for Kohli’s Test team,” Jaffer concluded.