India's Number 3, Cheteshwar Pujara faces criticism from Australian legends for his approach towards batting this season. Pujara answered back with half century in the first innings of the third Test

 

In the ongoing Test series down under, former greats and many others are lashing out at the slow scoring rate of India's number 3, Cheteshwar Pujara. Former Cricket legends like Ricky Ponting and Allan Border criticized his style of batting in the on going Test series. Border came up with comments like, “He is almost scared to play a shot”. Pujara recently came up with a fitting reply quoting that he has to bat in this manner. The Australian greats are lashing out on Pujara, at a time when the entire Australian team was not able to get out of the blocks in the first two test scoring at a modest run rate of 2.6 per over in the first innings of the first Test, again 2.6 runs per over in the first innings and 1.9 runs per over in the second innings of the second Test.

Not much of a different in the style of batting and the approach, in 2018-19 series, he was the highest run getter with 521 runs guiding India to win the Test series Down Under. The conversion rate was much better in that series. That was the only difference. He has a particular role to serve which is more into anchoring the innings helping others to play around him. Comparing both these series, there is a definite difference between the other Indian batsmen getting runs. The team was getting starts from Mayank, Kohli, Rahane, Rohit, Pant were all amongst runs in the 2018-19 tour and was able to play around Pujara and he was able to anchor the innings. The failure of others are currently haunting the team in this series and it will just be a matter of time before a turnaround.

The wall and his disciple

The same role was once play by the legend, Rahul Dravid who had a lesser carrier strike rate than Pujara. The fact the India was blessed with the start Sehwag used to give with a strike rate of more almost 100 most times and sometimes above 100 and then Sachin and Saurav coming out with an aggressive style of batting used to cover up for the low scoring rate by Dravid which enabled him to come out and play as he did throughout his career. Pujara has been instrumental in taking the Indian team’s performance to the level that it is now. The fact that he is having to bat and build partnership with multiple partners as the opening slot has been changed time and time again definitely is a task in itself and he is justifying his role and also adjusting with the different batting partners he is thrown in with. A two match bad performance does not make him a bad player. He has been contributing in the same way since his debut in Test Cricket and has been successful, scoring almost 6000 runs at an average of 48. He is ranked number 10 in the ICC rankings and he knows how to shut his critics. Coming out of quarantine, facing three of the best quicks going around in fast and bouncy pitches can take a toll on the best of players. He has already notched up a half century in the first innings of the ongoing Test and hoping to see his consistency comes back and answers his critics.

By Sayandeep Dutta

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