'One of my best innings' - Ajinkya Rahane

There may be no vacancy in the Indian batting line-up, whether in the shorter versions or the Test side, but it doesn't hurt to give the selectors a nudge. With a plethora of contenders - including M Vijay, Cheteshwar Pujara, S Badrinath, Virat Kohli, Manoj Tiwary, Rohit Sharma and Dinesh Karthik - waiting for a chance to open up, it will take a bucketload of runs to nudge the selectors.

Ajinkya Rahane managed just that last season, banging centuries seemingly for fun to tot up 1089 runs that proved instrumental in Mumbai's run to the Ranji title. The reward of a central Grade D contract followed, a logical progression for a batsman who has proved himself first in the Under-19, then the Ranjis and the Duleep Trophy. Yet he had a poor start to this domestic season, with only 98 runs in five Ranji innings till this game.

Besides the national scene, Mumbai also needed him to perform. Expectations were higher after last season's success, and he also had to share some of the burden from the departure of middle-order mainstay Amol Muzumdar to Assam. The fragility of the top order this season has required big runs from bowlers like Ajit Agarkar and Ramesh Powar to rescue the defending champions from embarrassment.

Rahane's response was a supremely paced, career-best 265 against Hyderabad that powered Mumbai to 521 for 2. "It was on my mind that I hadn't scored in three-four innings," he said, "so I was very determined to score … I rate it as one of my best innings."

It was a slow and sure increase in tempo through the innings: playing watchfully for much of Wednesday, bringing out more strokes once Mumbai were in control of the match and ending in a whirl of frenzied hitting as his team pushed for a declaration. His first hundred runs took 206 balls, the next hundred took 124, and the final 65 only 52.

"I was playing my shots a little early in my innings so far," he said about his failures this season. "This time I initially avoided shots, decided to not chase the ball outside offstump and tried not to play across the line."

It was an assured knock, the only chance coming off an edge that flew between the keeper and a widish slip when he was on 126. The extravagant strokes like the lofted cover drive weren't brought on till he was past 150 and the first six, a powerful hit over long-on, didn't arrive till he'd crossed 200.

With him racking up the runs quickly towards the end, did the triple-century cross his mind? "Nothing like that, the team management had already decided when to declare," he said. "I was batting with the captain [Wasim Jaffer] and at the drinks break itself [about 25 minutes before the declaration], he had told me what the target was."

Jaffer also made an aggressive, elegant century as the pair piled on 236 runs. The Rahane-Jaffer combo has proved productive for Mumbai - they scripted four century stands in the last Ranji season. Rahane's return to form comes exactly a year after he and his captain bludgeoned more or less the same attack in a Mumbai-record 335-run second wicket partnership.

That game had resulted in an innings victory; a similar result here will give Mumbai a nine-point cushion over fourth-placed Gujarat and a near-certain spot in the quarter-finals.

Rahane is helping Mumbai sort out their top-order problem, but on a day when M Vijay firmed up his place at the head of the queue with a composed 83 against Sri Lanka, the selectors will need more nudges like today if Rahane is to don the India cap.