India Have A Cheteshwar Pujara Situation That Mustn’t Be Shoved Under The Carpet
One of the unforgettably important things that coach Rahul Dravid asserted upon the completion of the World Test Championship final when asked if he was happy with the preparations that had gone into the game was, “I can’t be happy with the preparations ever; there was such small time frame preparing for this big final Test; such stringent timelines, there was hardly much time to gear up of the game!”
For a career built on painstaking focus and not to forget, pure honesty, there was no way that someone like Dravid was bluffing.
He said what he felt and truth be told, given the Test was inside a fortnight from the date of the IPL final, with many hardly having played Test cricket this year, could you absolutely deny every word that Dravid said?
Although, things were different for a certain Cheteshwar Pujara, and not slightly so, but drastically different.
In the days leading to the much exciting and as it turned out, widely watched Test, Pujara had all the time in the world to prepare for unarguably, Test cricket’s ultimate battle.
While someone like a Virat or Rohit, Jadeja or Gill could have realistically complained about having no sufficient time to adjust to highly alien English conditions having sweated for a month and a half in the sub-continent just earlier, Pujara could not have come up with any such explanations.
For nearly two months of time frame, he was out here in England and had kept himself busy scoring dollops of runs for his Sussex county.
He wasn’t just preparing for this one final dash of Test cricket’s much coveted battle, the big runs courtesy the hundreds he had been producing were standing evidences of just how keen he was for the mega five dayer.
As a matter of fact, you couldn’t possibly have faulted anyone suggesting that if there was one prominent Test batsman from India who might even outscore Virat Kohli, then it might well be Cheteshwar Pujara.
And yet, with scores of 14 and 27 against the mighty Australians, Pujara wasn’t patting the bat in the wake of some milestone moment; it did appear that one of India’s most respected sons, one truly committed to the cause of Test cricket had faltered in the very format, which has been his lifeblood up to this point.
But it wasn’t just the low scores he gathered in the Oval Test that earned him the scorn of the detractors; it was the manner in which Pujara gifted away his wickets that perhaps irked one too many.
In the first inning, he offered no shot to a rising delivery pitched around the off stump while in the final inning, he offered an uncharacteristic ramp shot, as it’s called, just when the stand with Rohit Sharma had begun to take its own course.
Although it ought to be noted that this wasn’t Cheteshwar Pujara’s first failure in a World Test Championship final.
With scores of 8 from 54 and 15 off 80, Pujara had flunked the first big Test India were giving against New Zealand, circa 2021, during the maiden edition of the championship.
Fundamentally speaking, in a game where batsman are supposed to not just stay at the crease but also produce runs whilst they remain there- picture the fabulous jobs done by slow starters in Tests like Younis Khan and Shiv Chanderpaul- what good is that effort really for when you stay out for 134 deliveries but produce just 23 runs (Pujara in the WTC final, 2021)?
But then, Pujara’s case is different and truth be told, a bit more arduous than the rest of his compatriots.
Unlike other cricketers who have the versatility of representing team India in other formats outside of Test cricket, Cheteshwar Pujara has no such luxury.
He must thrive in the only format in which he has excelled in all these years and this isn’t some tiny fraction of outing playing Test match cricket; Pujara broke into the national set up over a decade back in time.
Thus far, he’s gone beyond 7,100 Test runs, struck 19 centuries, went beyond a fifty on 35 separate occasions and moreover, faced some 16,200 plus deliveries.
He’s proven, time and again, that he’s the Test match mainstay for team India, one on whom the team can rely for biding his time, for batting session upon session and for finding runs when all that bowlers find are maiden overs consecutively on the bounce.
He’s made runs in India and away from the balmy comfort of home turfs. He’s taken body blows on multiple counts and not spewed a word of venom.
Pujara is someone who’s faced over 4,500 deliveries just from Australian bowlers.
What’s more? On one such occasion of quintessential grinding of Australia, he made them bowl 525 deliveries in a single inning of a Test, returning a dogged double century at Ranchi, circa 2017.
But that peak Pujara, the one who’d fire a majestic 193 a few years down the line and that too, Down Under seems to have waned away.
Physically and sentimentally, he’s very much there. You can’t doubt the desire he has to excel for India; it wasn’t that long ago where his 102 at Chittagong that came at the back of a faultlessly stoic 90 in December 2022 earned India a famous away win.
But what’s perhaps not helping Pujara is the lack of gallant runs scored in succession nowadays.
For instance; when Pujara scored that century in Bangladesh, it turned out to be his first in 52 innings. That is a rather ordinary effort from an extraordinarily committed cricketer who bats amid much pressure and comes early into an innings.
The Pujara we have amid us is a far cry from the run hungry Pujara we were fortunate enough to see in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
What’s perhaps also not helping his cause is that while he’s had his good and bad days, there’s a gaggle of captivating young talent that’s emerged ever hungry to break into a set up at the first sign of an established player’s vulnerability.
And where the last few seasons are concerned, then Pujara, who drew comparisons with Dravid for his willingness to apply focus and solidity amid pressure has gone rather soft.
This isn’t a take to malign a character cricket is fortunate to have; it’s what the numbers suggest.
This year, prior to the IPL, Pujara made in the 2023 Tests versus Australia (in India) 140 runs at average of 28 from four contests.
Earlier, against South Africa, he made 124 runs from 6 innings, averaging 20.6.
And if you go back further, then versus New Zealand, he made 95 runs from 2 matches (which included 4 innings). As a matter of fact, the only series where Pujara did look formidable to an extent came during the 5 match tour to England in 2021, where he hit 306 runs including a best score of 91 at Headingley. He had got 3 single-digit scores in the first three innings on that tour.
His intent can’t be questioned. Not can his commitment to sweat it out for a team he’s proud of representing.
But with a new Test Championship cycle beginning with the forthcoming tour to the Caribbean that features 2 Tests, maybe it’s time to offer some youngster that could go a longer way a fair run.
For where India’s undoubtedly committed number three is concerned, it is only fair to admit that he’s got his fair number of chances.
Has he not?
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