Was Pujara punished more than he deserved?
Cheteshwar Pujara is not an in your face, brash, over-confident cricketer, oozing with annoying aggressive intent, characteristics that seem to find favour with the present dispensation of the India team. Before the final Test got underway in Colombo, he was not among the favoured top five batsmen of the captain/ coach.
Almost derided for his virtues of patience and caution, he would not have found a place in the team but for the injuries to a few batsmen. As the Test match is heading for the final stretch and India look to seal a rare overseas series win, they have much to thank the man they never believed in. Was it an error of judgement or pure cricketing rationale that had kept Pujara out of the team for a while now?
Have his failures in England and Australia been over-exaggerated or was his exclusion a deserved call? In hindsight now, especially after his superbly constructed innings under the most demanding conditions, it would seem that Pujara was punished more than he deserved.
Here is a batsman who is a delight of the purists and a perfect brand ambassador for Test cricket. I am talking here in a purely commercial language as the world is in love with brands and not classical skills of a bygone era they think needs to be fossilised.
For example, when Pujara was negotiating the seam, bounce and movement of the Sri Lankan pacers with rare discipline and control, the commentators kept on emphasising how extremely slow and “painfully cautious” he was. This was a point being made at a time when India had lost their top order in a heap and needed someone to bat precisely the way Pujara was doing.
Once the pressure of the pacers was off and the spinners were introduced, Pujara started batting with refreshing freedom and displayed his outstanding footwork to attack the bowlers.
Later, when the day’s play was over, he was quizzed about the slow pace of his innings. A strange question to ask a batsman who had in all probability played a match-winning innings, though the match was just a day old.
Pujara, much like the way he bats, did not get annoyed at the question and made his point in the most polite manner possible. “One plays according to the match situation and if you look at my overall strike-rate, it is not that bad.” It definitely was not especially if you compared it with that of the man he is being pitted against, Rohit Sharma. This is a point this column has made earlier, but it needs to be repeated: both Pujara and Rohit have an almost identical strikerate of around 50. And in a team in which the failure rate of most other batsmen is growing by the day, Pujara deserves better.
This question, then, arises — is there an orchestrated campaign to portray Pujara as a laborious, stuttering batsman whose inability to score fast is detrimental to the team’s interests?
These doubts arise only for the reason that we live in an atmosphere of extreme suspicion where commercial interests of the players are alleged to play a role in team selection.
ONCE THE PRESSURE OF PACERS WAS OFF AND SPINNERS WERE INTRODUCED, PUJARA STARTED BATTING WITH REFRESHING FREEDOM