The captain’s knock at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, a masterful century that helped India secure a historic Border-Gavaskar Trophy victory in 2020–21, remains etched in the memories of fans. Ajinkya Rahane, who led from the front during an unforgettable chapter in Indian cricket history, officially announced his retirement from cricket on Thursday.
A batter known for his temperament and orthodox batting technique, he scored over 8,000 international runs across the three formats, featuring in 85 Tests, 90 ODIs, and 20 T20Is. Captaining the injury-marred Indian Test side to the historical 2-1 BGT series victory in Australia was one of his most defining moments as an international cricketer.
In the 2020–21 BGT, India were all out for 36 in the second innings of the first Test, going down 1-0 in the series. The side's best batter and captain, Virat Kohli, went back home for his first child’s birth while, on the other hand, India kept losing their key players to injury throughout the series, including Jasprit Bumrah, Ravichandran Ashwin, and Ravindra Jadeja. Despite all the odds stacked against them, the team went on to win the series 2-1, courtesy of the stand-in captain Ajinkya Rahane. His 112 runs under pressure in the second Test at the MCG steadied the Indian fightback, thereby levelling the series at 1-1.
He was born in a village named Ashwi Khurd in the Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra. He was seven when his family shifted from Ashwi Khurd to Dombivli, Mumbai. In a recent BBC show, Rahane shared stories of his earliest days in cricket, saying he used to travel by Mumbai local trains from the age of seven, all by himself, carrying his cricket kit bag to the training ground. He said his father had trusted him enough to manage on his own, which, according to him, was his father’s way of making sure he learnt independence. Years later, to Ajinkya's surprise, he got to know from his father that he secretly followed Ajinkya in another train compartment during those days.
In 2008–09, a 20-year-old Rahane played his second Ranji Trophy season with the Mumbai Cricket Association, where he scored 1,089 runs, helping his team secure their 38th title win. In 2013, he made his India Test debut, and in his third match, he scored 51 not out and 96 in Durban. Soon, his first Test century came at Wellington, in February 2014, against New Zealand. As a Test player, he soon built a reputation for scoring big in overseas conditions as he continued his stellar form with hundreds in Melbourne and Colombo, and later on, two centuries against South Africa in the 2015–16 Test series, where no other batter was able to score a century. In the 2017 Bengaluru Test against Australia, his partnership with Cheteshwar Pujara helped India level the series.
After his heroics in the 2020–21 BGT, he was dropped from the team in 2022 due to his struggles with the bat. In the 2023 World Test Championship cycle, he made his comeback and stepped up as the top scorer for India in the WTC final, which India lost to Australia. His final appearance for India came in the second Test against the West Indies at Queen's Park Oval, Trinidad in July 2023.
"Age is just a number," he said in October 2025, as the India batter returned to the Ranji Trophy, where he hammered a century against Chhattisgarh in a Group A Ranji Trophy game in Mumbai. After having played two more seasons of domestic cricket, including the Ranji Trophy, Rahane decided to bid farewell to his cricket career.
