Some five rainy seasons ago, when Cheteshwar Pujara made his Test debut, against the Australians at the M. Chinnaswamy stadium, the talk was we had the right candidate to step into Rahul Dravid’s shoes when the technically gifted Indian star would step into the sunset. Three years after Dravid has long settled into retirement, Pujara is still some way at finding his feet, not in the Test arena, but in the Test eleven.
A composed and compact batsman with that one essential component that marks him out in Test cricket — temperament — Pujara, at 27, has played just 29 matches in the long form. True, for the first couple of years, he was battling against the ‘Famous Five’ of the Indian top and middle order but even with none of them around for a good three years now, the Saurashtra batsman is nowhere near having cemented his place.
It’s ironical that five years later, Pujara comes back to the same venue and though the butterflies in his stomach may have eased, somewhat it wouldn’t have vanished entirely. Luckily for him, he’s coming off a match-winning second innings knock against the South Africans at Mohali.
Born and bred on pitches with the innate ability to milk the spinners, Pujara was at his classic best in the first Test that finished in under three days on a turf seldom known to have helped the tweakers in the past. But given that it’s the way forward for the Indian team, or so they believe, Pujara is confident of stepping up a gear in the second Test which should get underway from Saturday, weather portents allowing.
Seven hundreds and an equal number of fifties isn’t bad in 29 outings but his near average of 50 is stunning. Yet, his career has swung like a pendulum.“For me it’s the experience — having played lots of domestic cricket and scored big runs on domestic cricket has helped me know the pitches,” said Pujara on Thursday, giving an insight into the spin-friendly wicket that could be on offer in the series.
Admitting that time out from the team following a poor run in 2014 had forced him to tweak his batting stance a bit, Pujara said: “The most important thing about the stance is comfort. I discussed about it with my father and Rahul (Dravid) bhai before the Sri Lanka series and then I came down to conclusion of what I wanted and it has helped me.”
A match-turning and seventh century of his career in Colombo in the final Test which helped Virat Kohli clinch his first series win gave Pujara enough room to position himself in the squad. And now following the first Test win, Pujara feels they have a psychological advantage over the Proteas.
“It’s a fresh game, but the good thing for us is that we have won the first Test, so psychologically we can say that we have an advantage. Obviously, we can’t take them lightly — they are a good side.
“What we need to do is staying focussed on the things that are needed to win the Test match rather than worrying about what their team might be and what kind of cricket they can play. As long as we are focussed on the things we want to do, it will allow us to succeed in this Test match.”
