Ajinkya Rahane retired today from international cricket today. The Mumbai batter, all of 36 now, put out a video on social media this morning announcing he's done with the India cap for good, Test, ODI, T20I, everything. "Cap number 278, signing off," he wrote, and just like that, a career that began in 2011 came full circle.
Most tributes pouring in today will talk about the 112 at the MCG in the middle of the 2020-21 Adelaide horror show, or the six-year wait he endured just to get a Test debut. Fair enough, those moments deserve every bit of the praise. But scroll past the sentimental posts and there's a number sitting quietly in Ajinkya Rahane's file that almost nobody led India as often as him, yet somehow, nobody has matched.
