No Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah: Ajinkya Rahane picks his all-time India Test 11 with players he has played with originally appeared on Cricket News. Add Cricket News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- Ajinkya Rahane’s all-time India Test XI leaves out Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah.
- He chose only players he had played alongside and made MS Dhoni captain.
- Rahane retired in July after scoring 5,077 Test runs across 85 matches at 38.46.
Sachin Tendulkar & Rahul Dravid in; Virat Kohli left out! Inside Ajinkya Rahane's shocking all-time India Test XI
Virat Kohli’s name was missing from the all-time India Test XI that Ajinkya Rahane had put together. Rohit Sharma, another prolific batter of the past decade, also failed to find a place in the side.
Rahane set himself one rule for the exercise: he could only pick players he had shared a field with, whether in international cricket or in the domestic game.
Rahane, who is 38, handed the captaincy and the wicketkeeping gloves to MS Dhoni. He explained that Dhoni was the first captain he played under at the international level, which made the choice an easy one for him.
The opening slot went to Murali Vijay and Shikhar Dhawan, giving the side a left-hand and right-hand pairing at the top. Rahul Dravid was placed at number three, and Sachin Tendulkar followed him at number four. Rahane then slotted himself in at number five, with Dhoni coming in at six.
For the all-round and spin departments, Rahane trusted Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin, two bowlers who spent years winning matches for India on home pitches. The pace attack was made up of Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Mohammed Shami and Ishant Sharma.
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The XI, as Rahane named it, reads as follows:
- Murali Vijay
- Shikhar Dhawan
- Rahul Dravid
- Sachin Tendulkar
- Ajinkya Rahane
- MS Dhoni (captain and wicketkeeper)
- Ravindra Jadeja
- Ravichandran Ashwin
- Bhuvneshwar Kumar
- Mohammed Shami
- Ishant Sharma
Why did Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma and Jasprit Bumrah miss the cut?
The Kohli decision stands out the most, mainly because of how closely the two men worked together.
Rahane was Kohli’s vice-captain in Tests for several years, a period that included India’s rise to the number one Test ranking and the run to the 2021 World Test Championship final. Even so, the former vice-captain left his old skipper out.
Rohit’s absence is also surprising. The pair share their Mumbai roots and have batted together, and at times opened together, over a long stretch.
Rahane still went with the classic left-right combination of Vijay and Dhawan, which left out India’s senior opener and former captain. Leaving out Bumrah, who is widely seen as India’s modern spearhead, has also raised eyebrows.
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This was not the first time Rahane overlooked both Kohli and Rohit in a list of this kind. When he named his top five T20 batters earlier, neither of them appeared, and Abhishek Sharma was the only Indian to make it.
Rahane put Abhishek at the top, praising the opener for his consistency, his attacking approach and his maturity. Heinrich Klaasen came second on the list, followed by Nicholas Pooran, Finn Allen and Jos Buttler.
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Shubman Gill deserved a mention in a list built on shared dressing rooms
Rahane’s rule was simple, so it’s fair to test his list against it, and Shubman Gill is the name that fails the test most clearly. Gill made his Test debut at the MCG in December 2020 with Rahane leading the side, and he played a key part in the comeback that followed in Australia.
The two had a shared dressing room at a crucial moment, which means Gill was well within the eligible pool.
That doesn’t make his omission a mistake, of course. Rahane picked a team in which the middle order is full of legends, and an opener’s spot behind Vijay and Dhawan was always going to be tight.
Still, a list like this says as much about the selector’s loyalties as it does about talent. Rahane leaned toward the players who shaped his own career, and that’s a perfectly human approach. But Gill’s rise suggests that any such list, compiled five years from now, will look very different.
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