Melbourne: Ajinkya Rahane on Friday said he had apologised to Virat Kohli after his horrible mix-up with him led to the India captain's game-changing run out in the first Test against Australia in Adelaide.
Kohli was looking solid before the suicidal run out for 74 on the opening day at Adelaide Oval. Upon realising that there was no run in it, Rahane decided to send back Kohli but it was too late by then.
What followed was an inexplicable batting collapse, due to which the visitors crumbled to their lowest Test score of 36 in their second innings.
"After the end of day's play I went and said sorry to him (Kohli) but he was all okay, he was okay about it," Rahane said on the eve of the second Test here.
"We both understood that the situation we were in, we were going well at that point, but such things happen in cricket, you got to respect that and you got to move forward."
Stand-in skipper Rahane admitted that the run out handed Australia the momentum as they recorded an eight-wicket win inside two and half days.
"It was a really tough one, obviously we were going really well that moment, our partnership was good, and I could actually see that momentum going towards Australia after that run out," Rahane said.
Kohli, who has now returned to India for the birth of his first child, had backed Rahane to lead from the front in his absence in the remainder of the four-match series.
"I have said this previously as well that I feel like this is his (Rahane's) time to really step up and perform strongly as an individual and then as a captain as well," Kohli had said.
"I think, he will do a great job when I am gone back home, so we are on the same page completely and the vision remains simply to put in good performances and make sure that we are competing every game and the idea is to win the series," the batting maestro had said.
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Kolkata (PTI): A 22-year-old M Tech student was found dead in his hostel room in the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, the second such incident reported on the campus within a span of 10 days.
The student, identified as Soham Haldar, was found hanging from the ceiling of his hostel room on Tuesday and he was immediately taken to the institute hospital, where doctors declared him brought dead, an IIT Kharagpur official said.
Haldar, a dual-degree student in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering, was a boarder of the Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya Hall of Residence on the campus.
Police from the Kharagpur Town police station have initiated a probe into the incident as preliminary findings indicated that it could be a case of suicide, though the exact cause of death will be ascertained following the post-mortem examination, the official said.
In a statement, the institute expressed deep grief over the student's death and said a detailed inquiry has been initiated.
The authorities have informed the family and are extending all possible assistance to them, it added.
Director Suman Chakraborty told PTI that the institute will strengthen the mechanism to identify stressed-out and depressed students and take follow-up steps to address their issues.
The grief-stricken parents of the student, who hailed from Barasat in North 24 Parganas district, have come to the campus and the authorities will speak to them, he said.
"Haldar's friends, faculty and staffers also could not gauge any stress or anxiety in him. But we need to enable students suffering from anxiety and extreme stress to open up their minds and do everything needed to prevent such incidents," he said.
Investigators are also scrutinising CCTV footage from the hostel premises to piece together the sequence of events leading to the incident.
The incident comes close on the heels of another student's death reported on April 18, when 21-year-old Jaibir Singh Dodia, a third-year Mechanical Engineering student from Ahmedabad, allegedly died after jumping from the eighth floor of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Hall of Residence. That case is also under investigation.
The back-to-back incidents have once again brought the issue of mental health and student support systems at the institute into focus, especially in view of several such cases reported last year.
