By: Drcricket7 Staff
India’s make-shift opener Cheteshwar Pujara would be a happy man today. After a series of failures during the Australian tour at the end of the last year, he was left out of the playing XI for a long time.
In between Cheteshwar Pujara missed four Test matches for India. One each in Australia and Bangladesh and didn’t make it to the XI for the first two Test matches against the Sri Lankans in the ongoing series.
But with top two batsmen of the Indian Test team – Shikhar Dhawan and Murali Vijay – pulling out of the series, Cheteshwar Pujara finally got a chance to prove his worth. In fact, he made some telling statement on Saturday.
Against a Sri Lankan attack, Pujara was the one-man army and batted the way a Test batsman in supposed to bat. He also completed his 7th Test hundred of his career. Yes, he took a little more time than usual to settle down in the middle.
But Pujara didn’t look like someone who wasn’t a regular in the team for a while. From the time he took his guard, he was in control of things, looked complete and hungry for runs. His decent stints with India ‘A’ and county cricket in England also helped the cause.
Pujara is, probably, the only India batsman who has managed to take his mind off the IPL and there were a certain challenges that even made tougher. The best part of the story is that he never lost sight of his bigger goals and that is to represent India at all levels.
Due to a few constraints in his stroke-play, he couldn’t make a huge impression in the ODI team or for that matter he could make it big in T20s, but those shortcomings in the shorter and shortest formats of the game couldn’t devastate his morale.
Pujara has been focussed and remained supremely committed to the cause of representing India with high esteem. He is no Virat Kohli or Ajinkya Rahane, but his temperament has always been a special one.
Like his hero cum mentor Rahul Dravid, Pujara was susceptible to incoming deliveries and was getting out bowled, very often.
Under the tutelage of Dravid, who is the guiding force for the India ‘A’ team currently, Pujara has worked out his shortcomings and looking as solid as ever. He has indeed proved it to the world once again – form is temporary while class in permanent!
