Ajinkya Rahane admits Pujara's run-out 'hurt' Team India

The Indian team is in dire straits after yet another lacklustre performance from their batsmen at Lord’s. Under extremely challenging conditions, they came up against the best bowler in the world who rattled their line-up and returned with the figures of 5/20. The visitors were bundled out for 107 but things could’ve been better if Cheteshwar Pujara would’ve stayed in the middle who was looking good. He was run-out after a horrible mix-up with his skipper Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane has admitted that his dismissal hurt the team.

It was a crazy five-minute period of play when the rain was playing hide and seek with everyone. Pujara tapped a ball from James Anderson and ran as Kohli called him for a run. But for some reason, he turned his back after bringing Pujara half-way down and was left helpless. Soon after this mishap, heavy rain arrived but they were reduced to 15/3 and were never able to recover since then.

It was Pujara who was countering the conditions well and had face 25 balls confidently for his 1 run. But when the play resumed, the Indian batsmen fell like nine pins and none of the batsmen couldn’t apply himself.

It definitely hurts as a teammate

Ajinkya Rahane, while speaking to the reporters, admitted that Pujara’s unfortunate dismissal hurt the team and also went on to say that even the batsman was upset about the same. He also believed that the constant change of weather also didn’t help the team’s cause.

“It definitely hurts as a teammate, and I am sure even Pujara will be upset about his run out. The run out definitely hurt us and the weather after that too. I think we did not get to play for 3-4 hours, so definitely as a team, you feel really bad,” he said.

Rahane himself could score only 18 runs but was one of the very few batsmen who looked confident at the crease. There was a hope that he could replicate his 2014 heroics at the venue but Anderson was his nemesis. The vice-captain of the team felt if they could’ve batted the day out, better conditions were on offer on the third day.

“Before I got out today I was thinking about my innings at Lord’s in 2014. I think we had less time to bat out, about 25-30 minutes to bat out this evening. In my head I only had one thought if we could bat out today then tomorrow it could be totally different,” Rahane added.

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