Pujara style an antidote to modern India stereotypes

Centurion completes his best-ever Test innings, writes Tim Wigmore at the Ageas Bowl

When Cheteshwar Pujara was a four-year-old in Rajkot, he was playing with a rubber ball and a toy bat. His family took a photograph of the moment. After the photograph had been developed, Pujara’s father, Arvind – briefly a former first-class cricketer – was drawn to one detail. Though the ball was a couple of feet away from Cheteshwar’s bat, “He’s really watching the ball”, Arvind recounted in the book The Great Tamasha. He told his wife, Reena: “I think this boy may learn cricket easily.” She replied: “Then you must teach him.” And so Arvind hatched a plan for how to develop his son’s embryonic talent.

Each morning before work, Arvind took Cheteshwar to the local parkland in Railways Colony, where Arvind, who now worked for Western Railways, lived. Arvind would station his son in front of a tree, give him a bat and bowl underarm – again and again – to teach Cheteshwar to come forward and play with a straight bat.

In the years ahead, the training would become more obsessive, starting just after 5am every day, and then fitting in several more hours after school. Arvind started bowling with a hard leather ball even before Cheteshwar could fit into any pads; instead, Arvind tied strips of an old foam mattress around his son’s legs.

This was not a typical childhood, Cheteshwar knew, but the fatherson relationship was not strained in the way of, say, Andre and Mike Agassi. Cheteshwar wanted to be an international cricketer for himself, not merely his family. At the age of 12, in an under-14s match for Saurashtra, Pujara made 302 not out. He stood out for his gluttony and self-discipline.

Pujara has never betrayed this spirit. He bats as if in a gilded cage, free to accumulate at his own serene pace. In modern cricket, such a philosophy is not always beneficial: in eight years of international cricket, Pujara has played only 30 Indian Premier League games. When this year’s IPL began, Pujara was once again playing straight and practising his leave, this time for Yorkshire.

Specialisation in first-class cricket and patient accumulation mark Pujara out as an antidote to the stereotypes of modern Indian cricket. These qualities should be ideally suited to thriving overseas, and yet Pujara floundered in England in 2014, averaging only 22.20 in the series. He was even worse in six County Championship games for Yorkshire this season, averaging 14.33. So, in defiance of an outstanding Test record, Pujara was omitted from the first Test, before being recalled for Lord’s.

During India’s emphatic win over England at Trent Bridge, one of the most unobtrusively significant moments came in Pujara’s painstaking 72. The innings was almost funereal and yet, with each efficient nudge or forward defensive, Pujara located a little more of his lost fluency.

Pujara has always had a penchant for turning fine innings into supreme runs; on both England’s last two tours of India, he has made hundreds in consecutive Tests. And on the second day at the Ageas Bowl – when even Virat Kohli looked a little uncertain, and no one outside the top four made more than 14 – Pujara played probably his finest Test innings.

For all Pujara’s impeccable judgment, this was an innings characterised by far more than impeccable defence. There was bravery, withstanding two blows on the helmet; Pujara had treatment on his head and wrist after play, undergoing concussion tests. There was the shrewdness and adaptability to eke out 78 for the last two wickets. And there was elan, too, in Pujara’s dexterous use of his feet against spin; he has now scored 593 Test runs when advancing down the wicket to spin and been dismissed just twice.

This amounted to a compelling riposte to the great criticism of Pujara’s Test career: his mediocre average outside Asia, which he has now at least hauled over 30. Just after reaching his second hundred outside Asia, Pujara shuffled down the track once more – but this time to Sam Curran – and unfurled a rasping square cut. It suggested his self-discipline is a choice, and not a reflection of his limitations.

Arvind almost never watches his son live, fearing that he could be a distraction. But as he watched 4,000 miles away in Rajkot, he would have enjoyed another moment of vindication for all those mornings of underarm training.