Cheteshwar Pujara, a singularity in the 100-Test club

Cheteshwar Pujara. (Photo: Twitter)

In the Indian winter of 2010, VVS Laxman parted the waters for the umpteenth time to defeat Australia single-handedly. In the process of securing that one-wicket win at Mohali, Laxman would hurt his permanently ailing back badly enough to miss the next Test in Bangalore.
In those days, a middle-order slot in the Indian Test side was hard to come by. Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar and Laxman only getting better with age, and there wasn’t space for newbies in the middle order, and the inevitable generational change of guard was still some years away.

But the next generation was already serving notice. Rohit Sharma and Virat Kohli had already played for India, while Ajinkya Rahane’s prodigious talent was making heads turn in the Mumbai press circles. And then there was this other kid, whose name kept doing the rounds though very few had seen him in action. Because back then, no one noticed cricket from the sleepy outpost of Saurashtra. But you could not ignore the story that the scorecards had started painting about Cheteshwar Pujara. A triple-hundred at the Under-14 level, a 200 against England U19s, and several mountains of runs at the first-class level, even if they were being made on the batting paradise at Rajkot’s Saurashtra Cricket Association.

When Laxman hurt his back, it could have been any of these kids that got their chance. But it was only fitting that Pujara did, and that debut in Bangalore was a microcosm of everything that would come to define Pujara’s now 100-strong Test career.

First, the waiting game; Before he got to bat for the first time, Pujara waited 90-odd overs, as Sachin Tendulkar and Murali Vijay put on 308. A small wait, in the context of the years he had spent on the sidelines. Then, when he eventually got his chance, he would experience terrible luck; The ball had done nothing through that partnership, but Pujara’s third ball at the crease was an unplayable shooter that got him out. This was the last Test of the series, and Laxman would surely be ready before the next Test match came around. Was this the end, and had it come cruelly, almost before the beginning?

Good things come to those who wait. In the second innings, a small tactical call made by the team would go on to alter Pujara’s destiny. India were facing a 207-run chase on a pitch that had started doing things. In an effort to hold an ace back if things got tight later, India chose to push Dravid down, and sent in Pujara at three. For the first time, in his now 100-strong Test career, Pujara would show us the single-most important virtue in Test batting — making the most of an opportunity. Pujara would make 72 sparkling runs that day, off 89 balls. He would defend decisively, jump out of his crease like a coiled spring against the spinner Nathan Hauritz, drive the fast bowlers to distraction, and break open the game even before Australia had to deal with Tendulkar and Dravid.

In an alternative universe, Dravid would have batted at three and sealed the chase with Tendulkar, and Pujara would have gone back to the "Ignore" pile and slid down the pecking order, ostensibly below Suresh Raina. As things transpired he was promoted, foreshadowing his eventual ascension to Dravid’s pivotal position at one-drop, won India a great game, and made himself indispensable to India’s Test cricket plans.

Thirteen years hence, Pujara’s career has been an anachronism that eludes easy definition. It’s too simplistic to term him a throwback; For, in the IPL era, it’s impossible to have a throwback. Every season, India’s domestic circuit produces prodigious batters, boasting first-class averages in the 50s and 60s. You know the names — Shreyas Iyer. Sanju Samson. KL Rahul. Prithvi Shaw. Shubman Gill. Yashashvi Jaiswal. Yash Dhull. These batters serve notice at the age-group levels, then graduate from the school of hard knocks that is the Ranji set-up. But once they enter the senior circuit, things begin to change. The grounded, safe batsmanship starts assuming the dimensions and range demanded by T20. Their games evolve, and more tellingly, their personas evolve. The biceps, the spiked hair, the manicured beards, and the tattoos, making them prime properties in cricket’s commercial landscape.

And then you have Pujara — the singularity that is somehow oddly unimpacted by the vagaries of the 21st century on India’s cricketers.
Looking back, it’s both predictable and a surprise that Pujara didn’t make any progress in white-ball cricket. He boasts a stupendous domestic one-day (List A) record, and in a pre-T20 era may have had a long ODI career. By the same logic, who knows: Dravid may have never made the cut into limited-overs cricket in this era. It’s Test cricket’s gain that India — and Pujara himself — realised quickly that he was made for longform batting.

So, maybe, it’s easy to explain Pujara’s success using the classical Test cricket lexicon? No luck there either, for you cannot bucket Pujara into any known copybook used to define Test batters. Pujara is no Dravid — nothing about his batting is copybook. His stance is ungainly, he doesn’t have the classical back and across movement. He pokes his front foot forward with only moderate interest in getting to the pitch of the ball, and often plays the line without conquering the length against spinners. His grip borders on the comical, his bottom hand grabbing the bat at the neck, cleaver-live. That grip dictates the unusual flow in his shots — the beaver-ish drives through the off side, the jumping carves through point that you may define as square cuts if you are particularly generous, and the workman-like flick that doesn’t have an iota of the stereotypical subcontinental finesse. For a batsman whose game is founded upon defence as the first line of offence, he also bats with incredibly hard hands.

What you are left with is a batter who can neither play the big shots, nor looks easy on the eye. A player who is slow between the wickets, and not the sharpest fielder.

So, then, what exactly is Cheteshwar Pujara?

You go back to that debut innings, and the clues are right there. That day, Pujara hit seven sparkling fours. None of them were aerial shots. You can watch as many reels of Pujara’s batting as you can find online, and you’ll see the theme repeating, and a pattern emerging. Pujara’s batsmanship is all about cutting out risks, and playing the odds to mathematical precision. The only way you get Pujara out is by bowling unplayable balls, because his bloody-mindedness will never gift you an easy wicket. Not when he’s on 0. And not when he’s on 200.

Cricket is a game of bowlers testing the chinks of a batter, one ball at a time, in an effort to dislodge them the moment they make a mistake. It is a bit of a simplification, but Test cricket is broadly a battle between the bowler’s body and the batter’s mind. Pujara flips the central power equation of cricket on its head. He makes it a battle between the bowler’s mind, and — quite literally — his own body. Ask Pat Cummins, who busted his guts on that unforgettable final day at the Gabba, trying to get past Pujara, who refused to take him on, and wore blows all over his body until the bowler’s will was destroyed. Like Steve Rogers, even before he became Captain America, Pujara could do this all day, for five days. Every ball that Pujara survives — using his bat only when needed — is one more drop of Chinese torture for the bowling unit. Drop, drop, drop, until the bowler tires and blinks — and the moment he gets a bad ball, Pujara scores. At times, he’s willing to wait 50 balls for that elusive scoring opportunity, as he did while stitching a match-winning partnership with Kohli in Johannesburg in 2018.

A solid batter defends. An attacking batter drives and pulls. But a survivor does neither. Pujara’s batting strips batting to its very algorithmic essence: “Leave the ball unless you have to play it. Play the ball only if it is going to get you out. Hit the ball only if it is a bad ball that can be scored off.”

If ChatGPT3 were a Test batter, it would be Pujara.

As we enter the Bazball era, and with the deluge of T20 assaulting the cricket calendar, we may never see another like Pujara. Let’s cherish and celebrate the singularity while it lasts. Let’s salute the selectors for letting him be, and be thankful that they haven’t dropped him as often as they have threatened to. And, so, what if he looks clumsy and ungainly when he makes those runs — his most beautiful masterpiece is the scorecard.

Long Live Che Pujara. Long Live the Revolution.