Ajinkya Rahane, Rahul Dravid and Their Mirror-Image Career Graphs

Both scored centuries abroad before scoring 1 at home, both put team first, batted at 3, 5, 6, 7. Click here for more

Jinx. This one word will possibly be associated with the 2015 Delhi Test between Indian and South Africa, forever. At least, as far is Ajinkya Rahane is concerned.

It was in this very Test that “Jinx”, as Rahane is fondly called by his teammates, broke a jinxed run of not faring well in home Test matches. Despite scoring almost at will in domestic cricket, Rahane had only managed 47 runs in his first six Test innings on home soil.

However, in Delhi, he broke that jinx in spectacular fashion, scoring a hundred in both outings, thus becoming the fifth Indian batsman to score a century in both innings of a Test match. Rahane is now part of an elite club of Indian batsmen who have accomplished that feat; a list which boasts of the names of Vijay Hazare, Sunil Gavaskar (thrice), Rahul Dravid (twice) and Virat Kohli.

While compiling the list of Indians who had scored hundreds in both innings of a Test match, and after Rahane had accomplished the feat, I started comparing the careers of Rahul Dravid and Rahane and noticed there were plenty of similarities. Which forced me to ask the question if it would be right to say that the latter is shaping to be the new “Wall”?

There are several uncanny similarities when one compares the careers of Dravid and Rahane. Let’s investigate.

The graphic above clearly illustrates that both players did the hard yards , had scored plenty of runs and hundreds in the domestic circuit and were battle hardened material before staking a claim for a place in the Test side.

Taking the similarities further, both Dravid and Rahane played their first home Tests in Delhi; Dravid’s first home outing was against Australia in Delhi in 1996, while Rahane made his Test debut against Australia at the Ferozeshah Kotla too.

The similarities extend to how and where the two players scored runs too; before his first home Test century Dravid had already scored 5 Test centuries – in South Africa, Zimbabwe, New Zealand and Sri Lanka. Rahane too, before his first century in home Tests, had scored centuries in Australia, England, New Zealand and Sri Lanka.

In his first 22 Test matches, Dravid’s batting average in overseas Tests was nearly 10 points more than his batting average at home. Rahane’s numbers are pretty similar, in that he has fared better on the road; he averages 39.14 in home Tests against 46.37 on the road.

In terms of quickly establishing his place in the team too, the career paths of Dravid and Rahane are very similar. In his first 22 Test matches, Dravid was India’s top-scorer in 6 of the 35 innings (only Sachin Tendulkar had top-scored more often in those Test matches). With his twin hundreds in Delhi, Rahane has top-scored for India on 9 occasions in the 40 innings he has batted – no one has top-scored for India more often than Rahane in this period.

To accommodate the team’s needs, Dravid and Rahane have had to bat in different positions at different times; in his first 22 Tests Dravid batted as an opener, and at numbers 3, 5, 6 & 7. In his brief career so far, Rahane has had to bat at 3, 5, 6 & 7 and has scored hundreds in each of those positions.

Cricketing attributes aside, off the field too Rahane is very similar to Dravid – unassuming, humble, modest, hardworking and a complete team man. Given so many similarities at this stage, one only hopes Rahane can go the distance and accomplish all that Dravid during his illustrious 17-year international career and more.

Indian cricket will be richly served if that happens.