Explained: How Ajinkya Rahane rediscovered himself with CSK in IPL 2023

Chennai Super Kings batter Ajinkya Rahane has taken everybody by surprise in the Indian Premier League 2023. His resurgence has, in part, led to his comeback in the Indian Test team as well, from which he had been dropped. The Mumbai-born cricketer has been a force in Indian cricket for quite some time but lately has been out of touch.

Better known for his red-ball exploits for India, he has been playing the IPL since its inaugural season in 2008. The batsman has scored 4,356 runs in the league but since 2020, he has not been his best self.

In fact, Rahane has played only 18 matches in three seasons from 2020-2022, scoring 254 runs with just one fifty to his name and a strike rate of 100 or thereabouts. This year however, he is back and with a force. Such has been the dominance of Rahane this year that he already has surpassed the run tally of his last three seasons with one more game left in the league phase. Rahane's strike rate this season has been his best ever in the IPL - a whooping 169.8, and he already has two fifties to his name - 100% more than he had in the last three seasons.

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What stands out the most this season about Rahane is his intent. The batsman has often been tagged as a conventional player or in more crude terms - the one who plays slow. This season, however, he has come out all guns blazing, like a kid high on sugar during Christmas not listening to anyone but just rushing towards the gifts to open them. Rahane has been the same - coming out hitting boundaries, even on the good balls which he used to respect earlier, and just slam the door shut on the opposition.

The intent is visible from his numbers as well when we compare his performance from 2020-2022 to the 2023 IPL edition. In the three seasons before 2023, Rahane played 243 balls in total and scored 254 runs. This season though, he has just played 166 balls and has scored 282 runs already at an average of 35.25, hitting 13 sixes - seven more than he had hit from 2020 to 2022.

Now, let's take a deep-dive in how Rahane 2.0 has played in 2023 so far.

Breaking down Ajinkya Rahane 2.0

Rahane didn't feature in the first two games for CSK but has played in every single game since he batted in match three against Mumbai Indians. The batsman walked in at number three with CSK, having no runs on the board in the chase of 155 and a wicket down. By the time Rahane departed, CSK had more than half of runs required on board - 82 to be precise - and Rahane had scored 61 of them.

And the number of balls he took to score those runs? Just 27. He hit 23 runs in his first 10 balls, 30 in next 10 and eight of final seven. The innings also included seven fours and three sixes - one four and two sixes in first 10 balls, five fours and one six in next 10 and one four in last seven balls he played. Rahane's strike rate during that blitzkrieg of innings was 225.92 and Chennai went on to win the game by seven wickets.

This is how Rahane 2.0 announced himself.

In 11 matches he has played this season, Rahane came on to bat nine times and CSK have won six times during those matches - three while batting first and three while chasing. The maximum balls Rahane has faced this season is 29 but the interesting point is he has batted for more than 20 balls only twice in nine games and both times he scored a fifty and that too at a strike rate of more than 220.

Speaking of Rahane's strike rate in a bracket of 10 balls each - the batsman has scored 135 runs out of his total 282 this season in the first 90 balls he has faced (first 10 of each game he batted in). His cumulative strike rate in the first 10 balls during the nine matches he has batted in has been a whopping 150. With eight fours and five sixes in 90 balls, Rahane has hit one boundary almost every seven balls.

In the second part of his innings - 11 to 20 balls - Rahane has scored 106 runs (60 balls cumulatively) at a strike rate of 266, hitting 10 fours and five sixes - one boundary every four balls. And once past 20 balls, his 41 runs have come just in 16 balls at a strike rate of mind-boggling 256.

Now to the question: has Rahane played freely while CSK batted first or while chasing as well?

Whenever CSK chose to bat first in the games Rahane batted, which is four out of nine times - he scored 145 runs off 80 balls at a strike rate of 181, hitting 12 fours and eight sixes. Talking about 10-ball brackets, Rahane has scored 59 and 53 runs at a strike rate of 147 and 170 in the bracket of 1-10 and 11-20 balls, respectively. The only time he batted more than 20 balls while batting first, Rahane scored 33 runs off nine balls at a strike rate of 366.66. His average has been 48.33 while batting first.

When CSK have chased (five of the nine times in the matches Rahane batted in), he scored 137 off 86 balls at a strike rate of 159, hitting 10 fours and five sixes. In the 10-ball brackets, he has scored 76 runs from balls 1-10 and 53 from balls 11-20 at a strike of 152 and 182, respectively and the average is 27 - not bad at all for T20s.

Conclusion

Clearly, Rahane has decided to go big and boom-boom from ball one instead of his typical style of batting safe and long. His new-found love for hitting good balls has also given CSK much-needed impetus in the middle overs and the results are here for everyone to see - CSK are number two on points table with 15 points in 13 matches. And, the seven wins CSK have gotten, Rahane has batted in six of them. Welcome back, Ajju!

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