New Delhi: Indian cricket team's Test vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane, for some time now, has been facing severe backlash from critics due to his poor batting form in the longest format of the game. The star batsman has finally broken his silence after being under the scanner for a long time and gave a befitting reply to his critics, saying that such things (criticism) motivates him.
In his defense, the Indian Test vice-captain said that people criticize only important people. Rahane also defended out-of-form Cheteshwar Pujara and described his innings in the second innings of the Lord's Test as 'very valuable'.
"I am happy people are talking about me," Rahane told ANI during a press conference. "I have always felt people talk about important people so I am not concerned about that. It's all about the contributions for the team. Cheteshwar and I have been playing for a long time, we know how to handle pressure, we know how to handle certain situations, so we are not concerned about them. We are just focusing on the team, we just want to contribute for the team, and that's what we are doing. Whatever we can't control, we are not thinking about that."
Does the criticism motivate? "Everything motivates," Rahane said. "I mean playing for the country motivates me the most. I am not bothered about criticism. As I said, people criticise only important people. I am happy people are criticising me. I only focus on the controllables."
"I always believe in contributions to the team. For me, I always think about the team so that contribution of 61 or 62 was really important.
"It was all about hanging in there. The communication was all about thinking about small targets and then build it from there. We always talk about Cheteshwar, he plays slow, but that innings was really important for us. He batted 200-plus balls, even though he got just 46 [45] runs, I think those 200 balls were really important for us.
"We back each other. He told me to back my game. I told him to back his own game, whatever methods he wants to go with. I thought the communication was very good. We just wanted to build one good partnership. We knew 170-180 would have been a very good score on that wicket."