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Back in the day at a camp for the country’s top juniors, Cheteshwar Pujara, like many times in the past and as is the case even now, was asked to tweak his batting fundamentals. It wasn’t about his strike rate. Pujara that day had got a lecture about his faulty grip. “You hold the bat too low, bring your hands up,” a reputed coach from Mumbai had told him.
That evening the worried teenager, already famous on the circuit for his daddy hundreds, called his father, his life-long coach. Pujara Sr played it smart, advised his son to hold the bat the way the coach wanted, but only when he was around. The mini-crisis was averted, but only temporarily.
This would be a recurring theme of Pujara’s Test career spanning more than a 100 games. He remains an outlier in a rigid system that is reluctant to accept an unfashionable, but highly effective, old-school cricketer. The Mumbai episode was the first of the many attempts to rewrite his cricket, force him to be like others, make him somebody he wasn’t.
Not included for the West Indies tour, dutifully moving to Bengaluru for Duleep Trophy, he continues to run into walls. Untouched by the Ashes rumbling and Australia’s unboxing of England’s new-age Test adventurism, Pujara’s vintage approach has been labelled archaic by those calling the shots in Indian cricket.
Is it over for India’s Test great? Has he walked into the sunset unsung and uncelebrated? Though there is no official confirmation, it is learnt that the decision-makers didn’t endorse his batting method.
🏏 ❤️ pic.twitter.com/TubsOu3Fah
— Cheteshwar Pujara (@cheteshwar1) June 24, 2023
Those aware of the selection meeting proceedings say that the word ‘intent’ was uttered by someone important when Pujara’s name came up for discussion. The rest of the committee, desperate to make a token change after the debacle in the World Test Championship (WTC) final, lunged at the lowest-hanging fruit. It seems, for the selection committee, coach Rahul Dravid and captain Rohit Sharma, it wasn’t about taking the right decision; it was more about opting for the least-problematic call.
Cheteshwar Pujara was felicitated on his 100th Test match at the Arun Jaitley Cricket Stadium in New Delhi. (Express Photo by Praveen Khanna)
It is a known fact that Pujara is too much of a gentleman to call the selectors a pack of jokers or pour out his angst in public. There was no fear about social media reaction too. It would be organic and un-orchestrated, thus short-lived and feeble. Test specialists aren’t known to have the backing of paid influencers nor do they command the relentless army of bots to push agendas or shape narratives. Instead he tweeted out a batting training video where the first visual was of him shouldering arms.
It helped that the selectors, in the name of transition, included a couple of talented youngsters – Yashasvi Jaiswal and Ruturaj Gaikwad. The fans had heard the praise of the two IPL heroes on loop for close to two months and it was still ringing in their ears. The world’s leading cricketing voices, paid handsomely to talk up the league, had repeatedly called them the next big things.
Once again the selectors were leaning on IPL runs – let’s not forget it is still a domestic competition with every team taking the field with at least two mediocre bowlers – to justify Test choices. It’s an old trickery, one that fools the game’s frivolous fans, and there are many around these days. It’s a known fact that IPL has the power to brainwash minds, it can even make a Pujara-to-Jaiswal switch sound convincing. This isn’t a tirade against blooding youngsters, this is about understanding the rationale of closing the doors on the team’s top performer in Tests. This is about solving the ‘Why Pujara?’ puzzle.
Unfairly treated
With Pujara, it has rarely been about runs. In the last WTC cycle, he had 928 runs, just four less than Indian topper Virat Kohli. Their strike rate too is similar, both in their early 40s. Kohli’s recently-ended three-year-long Test hundred drought was as bad, if not worse, as Pujara’s.
— Cheteshwar Pujara (@cheteshwar1) May 21, 2023
Here’s putting out a few numbers that don’t quite make it to television screens. Before the ton at Ahmedabad against Australia earlier this year, Kohli was without a hundred for 23 Tests. During his slump, he scored 1,214 runs and had just six 50s. Pujara, meanwhile, before his 102 against Bangladesh at the end of 2022, had gone without a hundred for 28 Tests. However, he had 14 50s in that period and scored 1,364 runs. Unlike Kohli, who always remained in the playing XI, Pujara was sent home twice.
Cheteshwar Pujara plays a shot. (Express Photo by Nirmal Harindran)
But how can you drop Kohli? That’s a very valid cricketing question. The former captain is among the best in the world, his name in the playing list gives the team an aura and shakes the confidence of opposition bowlers. Now, share the squad picked for the West Indies tour with an ardent Test match watcher, or anyone from Australia, and the first question to crop up is: But how can you drop Pujara?
Pujara, by sheer strength of numbers, is India’s red-ball giant. His first-class record lines him up with the game’s greatest. With over 19,000 runs, he is sixth on the India list behind Sunil Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, VVS Laxman and Wasim Jaffer. His 16 first-class double hundreds place him over the great Ranji. Virat has 7, Rohit Sharma 5 and Kane Williamson 5.
Indian cricket, in the last decade, had two path-breaking Test achievements – a rare away series win in Sri Lanka and the historic triumph in Australia. Pujara can claim to have single-handedly orchestrated both these feats. With three hundreds on the historic 2018-19 Down Under, he was the Player of the Series. Against Sri Lanka in 2015, he carried his bat through to score a match-winning 145 in the decider at Colombo. At Brisbane, they still talk about his valiant 50 in 2021, while playing the wise-old sherpa to the mercurial mountain climber Rishabh Pant.
Pujara never had the luxury to rest on these sparkling laurels. He was always on test. If it wasn’t about how many runs he was scoring, it was about how much time he was taking to score them. Many times in his career, he has walked on the field, fighting the little devil in his head that keeps whispering that this could be his last Test.
The other day, veteran Aussie spinner Nathan Lyon, another Test specialist, played his 100th consecutive Test. In Australia, unlike in India, they value their non-stars, non-IPL-playing Test performers. Pujara hasn’t even been able to cement his place as the team’s No.3. Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul and Hanuma Vihari are among those who have pushed him from his regular spot. Rohit had to play Tests, Rahane needed a change, KL was to be adjusted, Vihari had to be persisted with – every playing XI problem had a Pujara solution.
Not the favourite
Other than rare occasions, as it was when Duncan Fletcher was at the helm and liked him, Pujara would have to deal with coaches who wanted a put-together team of 11 Virat Kohlis and captains who were misinformed that aggression in Tests was all about ‘strike rates’.
In these regimes, Pujara looked confused. That stubborn Pujara of the past, who didn’t listen to the junior coach and remained overly bottom-handed all his life, had to move away from cricket’s time-tested Test match batting formula, the one he embraced as a child. Sitting in the dressing room all day, contemplating your future, carrying drinks, can break your resolve. He seemed finally giving in to those wanting the sport to homogenise cricketers, to be photocopies of each other. He tried sailing in two boats but failed. Pujara will go down in history as the cricketer Indian cricket spectacularly misunderstood.
Pujara deserved better. Couldn’t they have rested all-format players Rohit or Kohli and kept them fresh for the ODI World Cup? With his body of work, hadn’t Pujara done enough to deserve one easy away series in the West Indies to build on his confidence and serve Indian cricket longer? No, that perk can only be extended to the game’s megastars Rohit, Kohli and the born-again IPL star Rahane. Besides, he might have scored runs in thousands but doesn’t have social media followers in millions.
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