Ajinkya Rahane To Lead Mumbai In Vijay Hazare Trophy

Ajinkya Rahane, India’s Test vice-captain, will lead Mumbai for the first four games of the upcoming Vijay Hazare Trophy in Bangalore. Rahane has replaced Aditya Tare who has struggled with the bat across format.

Tare had led Mumbai to the Ranji Trophy title in 2015-16 season and final in the following year. Shreyas Iyer has been named Rahane’s deputy.

Mumbai will kickstart their campaign against Baroda on September 19 in Alur.

Earlier, Mumbai selector Ajit Agarkar had expressed his delight over the availability of Rahane.  At the same time, the former India fast-bowler had insisted Tare was still an important player for the team.

“We’ve got the India vice-captain (Ajinkya Rahane) playing this time (in Vijay Hazare) for Mumbai, which hasn’t happened in the last few years. We’re quite happy that he’s available. Shreyas is the India A captain. So, it’s not about removing anyone. We’ll take a call (on Mumbai captaincy for the Ranji Trophy) seeing who’s available at that point in time,” Agarkar had told TOI.

“Tare is still an important, senior player for us. He’s our first-choice wicketkeeper. He’s been around for a while, and we need experience,” he had said.

Tare lost his captaincy after managing just 237 runs in six games at 23.70, including three fifties in the Ranji Trophy. His form in the 50-over and 20-over format was not promising either. He scored just 186 runs in seven games at 26.57 (two fifties) in the Vijay Hazare Trophy, and 145 runs in eight games at 24.16 in the Syed Mushtaq Ali T20 tournament in 2017-18.

Interestingly, Rahane himself is not going through a very good batting phase. After a poor outing in this year’s Indian Premier League and losing his place in India’s limited-overs team, he did little in the England series to prove the selectors wrong. The right-hander managed just 257 runs in five Tests at 25.70, including two fifties.

At a time when India is looking for some stability in their middle-order in ODIs, a good show in the Vijay Hazare Trophy might put Ajinkya Rahane in contention.

Meanwhile, opening batsman Prithvi Shaw is also in the squad. The Under-19 World Cup-winner recently received his maiden Test call-up for the last two Tests in England.

Mumbai squad:

Ajinkay Rahane (c), Prithvi Shaw, Jay Bista, Suryakumar Yadav, Siddhesh Lad, Aditya Tare, Eknath Kerkar, Shivam Dubey, Akash Parkar, Dhawal Kulkarni, Shams Mulani, Vijay Gohil, Tushar Deshpande, Roston Dias