Cheteshwar Pujara Has Got His Flow Back: Father, Arvind Pujara
Cheteshwar Pujara was recently dropped from the Indian team for their last Test series against Sri Lanka at home after India lost the test series in South Africa 1-2.
India was the favourite to win the test series in the rainbow nation but after winning the first test, they lost the last two test matches and lost out on the opportunity to win their first-ever test series in South Africa.
Two of India’s premier batters on the tour, Ajinkya Rahane, and Pujara did not perform as per expectations and hence were subsequently dropped from the national side.
Pujara Was Disappointed After Getting Dropped: Arvind Pujara
Pujara’s father who has also been his personal coach all these years told PTI that lack of game practice was one of the main reasons why Pujara couldn’t score big runs in recent times. It needs to be mentioned that the last century Pujara scored in international cricket was way back in 2018-19 in the last Test Match of the Border Gavaskar Trophy at SCG.
Since then his performances in international cricket only went down and subsequently, the selectors had to take the harsh call of dropping the veteran of 95 Tests from the team.
“I feel the lack of game time was a big reason why he could not be consistent over the past three seasons,” Arvind Pujara told the PTI.
Pujara is a one-format player and because of Covid, there was no domestic cricket for a season, which affected his game beliefs and his father.
“When you play the likes of Australia and England, you have to be on the top of your game as you don’t get loose balls that you may get at the domestic level.
There were not enough games for him to play at the domestic level to be ready for bigger battles. That I feel impacted his consistency at the highest level.
“Now that he is getting to play regularly, you can see the consistency is back in his game,” said the father cum coach.
Pujara has been in great touch in the County championships as he has scored over 500 runs in just 3 innings. If Pujara keeps performing like this he might be in the reckoning for selection against England for the one-off test in July.
“That is for the selectors to decide. I feel especially in overseas conditions, you need your experienced players in the team to deal with tough situations and also guide the youngsters. He just needs to keep scoring,” Pujara’s father said on the possibility of his son’s return to the national side.
Pujara would hope to continue this run as he hopes to make a comeback to the Indian side.
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