For someone who has against his name nearly 7,200 runs, 7195 to be precise, and in addition to that, 19 international centuries, Cheteshwar Pujara must count among India’s best at the Test level.
In an age of wham-bam cricket defined by huge sixes and strike rates that resemble skyscrapers, Pujara stood away but firmly from the prototype of a modern day batsman.
He was conservative in an age of attractive hitting, patient while many others played extensively with unrestricted risks and took his own time to get going.
On one particular occasion, he opened his account off 36 deliveries against New Zealand, which was around two summers back in the day.
From Johannesburg to Jamaica, Mumbai to Melbourne, Pujara stood tall at the wicket and even took body blows for the cause of his team, seldom actually concentrating on his own landmarks.
Many to this day- and can they be doubted- credit Gill and Pant’s blazing fifties at The Gabba two years back in the 2020-21 season. But it was a victory in which Pujara put his body on the line, literally speaking, to come to India’s cause.
As Cummins and Hazlewood developed some sort of a fetish to aim at the batsmen’s bodies, Pujara took no fewer than fifteen to twenty hits on him, some of which landed close to the back of the neck and desperately dangerously close to the grill on other occasions.
But he stood still. He stood unbent and unmoved.
He defied short pitched stuff and excessive bounce with a sense of urgency with which one defies meeting an unwelcoming and uninvited guest.
His 56 off 211 in the fourth inning ensured Indians weren’t some sort of paper that the Australians would steamroll in their bid to defend their Gabba supremacy. Perhaps if there was a half century that was just as full of character as a century then it was this 56 which took nearly four hours in completion and came to the team’s aid.
Although, it’s not that Cheteshwar Pujara only excelled against the Australians, an opponent against whom he still averages 50 with the bat; versus England he demonstrated grit and temerity akin to an Olympian who rushes and stretches himself against all odds.
Besides scoring nearly a 1000 of his Test runs in Australia, 993 to be precise, and 870 in England and the Wales, Pujara proved that his stoicism wasn’t suitable or restricted to Indian conditions alone.
If a batsman averages 39.5 against England and the BlackCaps and averages north of 70 against teams like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, averaging 78 versus the Bangladeshis to be precise, then he must possess the versatility and dexterity at the highest level.
As a matter of fact, the more difficult the opponent, the stronger would Pujara’s resolve become.
His 193 that came off 373 at the revered SCG in 2019 laid the perfect foundation for Team India to grind Australia to a draw. It would be a contest where the visitors would amount a whopping 622 runs with Cheteshwar Pujara leading the way.
A rare occasion where India didn’t need Kohli to step up; the giant actually not being with his team on the tour.
Pujara likened the Aussies to a behemoth team against whom his massive talent would take real shape.
Humungous shape. A couple of seasons ago, circa 2017, Pujara blunted the visiting Australian attack to a tour de force effort, scoring 202 precious runs but grinding the giants of the game for no fewer than 525 deliveries, a world record for the longest inning played by an Indian batsman in a Test.
But all of that said, where Pujara stands at the moment- notice he’s been overlooked despite irrefutable experience and dollops of county cricket runs most recently- is down to his own doing. Is it not? If you think about it, just as well as he’s progressed in playing timely and patient knocks for India, he’s even failed to deliver despite being persisted with and during momentous Test matches.
Pujara, one has to admit with a pinch of salt, failed to deliver not once but twice while playing the World Test Championship finals. On both occasions, he failed at England, where he’s played 16 Tests and 32 innings, flunking first against the BlackCaps and later, against the mighty Aussies as seen last year.
Moreover, these key absences among major runs came at the back of a rather ordinary showing on India’s tour of South Africa back in 2021, wherein the otherwise dogged right hander scored a solitary fifty but fared rather modestly.
He’d score 124 runs from 6 Test innings and not once did he stay put for at least 100 deliveries, which as one saw over the course of his career, was Pujara’s standard operating procedure.
But while Pujara’s Test career, which is fundamentally his India career, can’t be dubbed a failure. It is anything but. Anyone who has faced the likes of Starc, Lyon, Cummins, Hazlewood, Leach, Anderson, Broad, Roach, Gabriel, Herath, Chameera, Ngidi, Maharaj and scored 7,195 runs can’t be dubbed as a failure.
But for sure, the Pujara we saw in the recent years became a batsman who seemed sedate and even uncomfortable in the middle.
While his bat became quieter, those wielded by the others around him, including those of Pant, Gill, Rahul, Iyer and company begs me to make the right kind of noises.
And it’s in this rather uncomfortable spotty zone in that he’s been impressive and successful but not a humongous success where lies the Cheteshwar Pujara conundrum. His is the case of the what-might have been!
Could he, for instance, have scored more than his nineteen hundreds by upping the ante of scoring just a bit?
Should he have taken a lot lesser deliveries than he did to get going? While the critics who bemoaned his very slowish rates at scoring may have seemed caustic, they really were making a point that Pujji, as he’s been called, was too slow on occasions.
Today, that a man associated with the focus of a monk and that perennially powerful sense of concentration at the crease stands ignored for a recall, just who does one blame? He’s not in the team. But will he ever again be? Moreover, just what may the thoughts of the 36 year old be at this time?