MELBOURNE: Ajinkya Rahane is brave, smart, calm and has the respect of his team, former Australia skipper Ian Chappell has said while praising India’s stand-in Test captain. “It was no surprise that Ajinkya Rahane captained India flawlessly at the MCG; anyone who saw him in charge in Dharamsala in 2017 would have recognised a man born to lead cricket teams,” Chappell wrote in a column for ESPNcricinfo. “There were a lot of similarities between that 2017 match and the one at the MCG. Firstly, it was between the same two highly competitive rivals, then there was the valuable first-innings lower-order contribution from Ravindra Jadeja, and finally Rahane aggressively accumulating the required runs in a nervy pursuit of a moderate victory total,” Chappell wrote. Rahane scored a brilliant century in the first innings of the MCG Test and then scored unbeaten 27 as India chased down the 70-run target with eight wickets in hand.
