A couple of days back, Cheteshwar Pujara informed his father Arvind about his decision to retire from all forms of cricket. “Don’t you want to play one more Ranji Trophy season?” – was the reflex reaction by the man, whose obsessive commitment to technically-perfect batting had made his son India’s all-time Top 10 Test run-getter. “No,” said Cheteshwar.
Arvind, 74, understood it was time to officially fold up the highly successful pet project. According to Cheteshwar, his father gave that wise nod, the one he gave when he connected the ball from the meat of his bat in the nets, let his body lean on the back rest of his easy chair and gave a big smile of contentment. “He looked relaxed and even I am feeling a lot lighter,” Pujara says.
And thus ended a unique cricketing journey that began from Indian cricket’s remote outpost at Rajkot in Gujarat, successfully negotiated the twists and turns of the maze where many have lost their way to reach the fulcrum of Indian batting.
When Cheteshwar was still Chintu, barely 3, Arvind noticed that his son would always have his eyes on the ball while smashing it with his tiny plastic bat. By 8, mother Reena had stitched a pair of mini-pads from an old mattress. At 14, Cheteshwar scored a triple hundred in a BCCI tournament. Months after turning 18, he was named Man of the Series at the Under-19 World Cup. Test debut at 22 and now putting his bat to rest for good at 37.
India’s long-time No.3, who for most of his career did fill Rahul Dravid’s shoes but couldn’t match his consistency or go near his run tally, has called it a day. Pujara finished with 103 Tests, 7,195 runs, average of 43, just ahead of past batting stalwarts like Dilip Vengsarkar and Mohammad Azharuddin.
In a nation that has periodically produced internationally acclaimed batsmen, he was the 8th most successful run-maker ever. However, there was one achievement that none of the 7 above him – Tendulkar, Dravid, Gavaskar, Kohli, Laxman, Sehwag, Ganguly – could match.
In 2018, Pujara scaled a peak that no Indian cricketer had reached. He single-handedly trounced the mighty Aussies at their home. He scored three hundreds, compiled 521 runs and faced 1,258 balls to be the Man of the Series in India’s first-ever Test series triumph Down Under. It took a boy from Rajkot to do what no Indian team had done for 71 years and 11 tours. Others would have more runs, centuries, fame, fortune and endorsements but Pujara would have his ‘Australia’ – that priceless memory that no one can match.
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Pujara an outlier
In the Indian pantheon of greats, Pujara is an outlier, the lone specialist batsman who isn’t from a major metro. In the crowd of achievers from Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad – he is the lone small-towner.
“As a little boy from the small town of Rajkot, along with my parents, I set out to aim for the stars; and dreamt to be a part of the Indian cricket team. Little did I know then that this game would give me so much invaluable opportunities, experiences, purpose, love, and above all a chance to represent my state and this great nation,” Pujara wrote on social media.
Since the time of Raj, batting was an elite pursuit. The Kings would bat, their retinue would bowl. Even at the start of the century when Sourav Ganguly ensured fair representation for Little India in the Indian team, it was only bowlers who were able to break the barrier.
There would be Zaheer Khan, Munaf Patel, Irfan Pathan, Harbhajan Singh but the batting slots seemed reserved for those from the big cities.
Saurashtra, Pujara’s home team, was part of cricket’s ancient history. The land of Ranji didn’t enjoy the reputation it once enjoyed.
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Pujara, and Jamnagar’s Ravindra Jadeja, have been able to retrace those fading lines on India’s cricket map. But this rewrite wasn’t easy.
At the West Zone level, the region Saurashtra is part of, Mumbai consumed most batting spots. After 300 at the under-14 tournament, Pujara wasn’t included in the India team. He’s too slow, he holds the bat too far down. The strike-rate ghost had chased him since those junior days. It didn’t bother him then nor after he made his India debut. The Pujaras were stubborn, they had suffered way too many detractors, they knew what they were doing. The world took its own sweet time to understand them.
As a rule, being the highest run-getter at under-19 World Cup would get a teenager a India call but that wasn’t the case with Pujara. He once hit 3 triple hundred, read again it isn’t a typo, in just one month, read again this too isn’t a typo, on the domestic circuit. Still he wasn’t fast-tracked. But like those who have come up the hard way, when Pujara did get his call he never looked back.
His appetite for big scores has continued. His first class record – that includes Tests, Ranji games and county matches – he has faced 41,715 balls and scored 66 hundreds. His double hundred count puts him in fourth spot internationally. He’s fourth on the international list behind Don Bradman, Wally Hammond and Patsy Hendren. The only Indian closest to him is the great Ranji on 14th spot.
The death of his mother when in teens, two major injuries and demoralising vibes from those calling the shots in the dressing room were others obstacles that Pujara negotiated because of his spiritual and philosophical bent of mind.
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Many times players like Pujara, and VVS Laxman, too get bracketed as the ‘unsung heroes’ of Indian cricket. But that’s a lazy and inaccurate judgement. The connoisseurs of Test cricket around the world value the contribution of those not on the conventional batting podiums.
Recently, during the India-England tour, Pujara was readying for this second innings as a TV expert. Before the game most players he had shared the dressing room with would be seen having conversations and laughs. Back in the day when Pujara did the miracle at Australia, the present India captain Shubman Gill had made a succinct statement. He had said for a youngster like him it wasn’t just the 500-plus runs Pujara had scored that were inspiring but what it was the 1,200 plus balls he faced that were the new benchmark for them. By the end of the tour, Gill would have walked his talk and Pujara had inspired the next generation.
Having played for four English counties, Pujara had friends at most venues during the series. They would coax him to keep travelling to England during summers even after retirements. Pujara would confide that he was keen but his priorities had changed now.
“My father is getting old, he needs me around the house. My child is growing, my wife also needs extra hands at home. These two have done so much for my career, now it is my time to be around for them,” he said.
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From this Sunday, life at the Pujara household will change. They wouldn’t be talking about cricket at the dining table nor would father and son plan their nets like they have done for over three decades.
