Miles Away From The IPL, Cheteshwar Pujara Is Making News!

Cheteshwar Pujara is looking good at the moment. And even as his form is blossoming miles away from the batting friendly IPL pitches of India, it instils much hope and vigor for a victory hungry India who’ll look to come up trumps against the Aussies in June!

Anyhow, if his recent scores against Australia, in the much-vaunted Test series played in the sub-continent were any evidence, then it can be said with a hint of respectability that the right-hander still has it, even as the magnitude of runs eschewed him.

Pujji vs the Aussies

Just to cast our minds on the recently-completed Test series that happened, for the larger part, in March 2023, the following are Cheteshwar Pujara’s scores:

At Nagpur, Cheteshwar Pujara didn’t get to bat in both innings and made only a 7 in the first. He ended up scoring a naught in Delhi, which wasn’t a good sight. But just when it seemed that his Test form was completely nosediving, the Saurashtra man bounced back.

He’d remain unbeaten at the wicket in scoring a 31. India were on the top. He started the Indore Test match with a solitary run, a game that not many would relish in the times to come given just how poor the wicket at the Holkar stadium was.

But getting the hint that the worst was on the cards if he didn’t quite get a score, Cheteshwar Pujara put that old world obduracy at the wicket into play and emerge with a finely crafted 59 in the second innings.

That Indore effort was hallmark of all things we’ve come to know about Cheteshwar Pujara; patience, technique and the time spent at the wicket. He’d spend 142 deliveries out in the middle.

And then came the final Test match. While he didn’t get a chance to bat at the Ahmedabad Test‘s second inning, given the sheer volume of runs India had already scored, he’d begin the first inning decently, grafting his way to score 42 useful runs.

The 120-ball-stay at the crease suggested that the focused trier for India still very much had it. Though we didn’t get the privilege to see the humble man raise his bat having scored a hundred; that Pujara amassed 140 collectively in the series still meant that the runs were coming.

Cheteshwar Pujara away from the IPL

And now, as much of the cricket-obsessed Indian audiences remain ever so firmly arrested in the grasp of the IPL, there’s something that Cheteshwar Pujara has recently done that beckons our attention.

Just a few hours ago, among the biggest developments from the world of county cricket was that Cheteshwar Pujara had crowned himself with yet another century in England, albeit there was something more different to him this time.

It was supposed to be Cheteshwar Pujara’s captaincy debut for Sussex in the ongoing season of the County championship.

Rather interestingly, it was the stroke with which the dogged right hander brought up his hundred that made most headlines.

Playing a scoopish uppercut towards the third man region for a boundary, Pujara choose the most unlikeliest of Pujara-strokes to reach a century that’s bagging headlines everywhere.

And why not? It’s one thing to score a three-figure-mark and something quite other to do so in a really unorthodox fashion.

The significance of Cheteshwar Pujara’s 115 off 163

When he blazed his much noted century for Sussex against Durham at Hove, it would be Cheteshwar Pujara’s 57th first-class century. This just goes to prove what a class act the Indian batter is.

From the onset of the last county season, Pujara has looked the part of the man that has the gear and the craft to find his feet plenty of miles away from India.

What his most recent effort does is that it keeps his team in good stead for the much awaited World Test Championship final, which goes underway in June.

Maybe going by what they say in an ideal situation, saying that Pujara’s form dictates one to say- cometh the hour, and cometh Cheteshwar Pujara!