Matthew Hayden Asks Australians To Take A Cue From Cheteshwar Pujara's Batting

Well, it was a great tour for Cheteshwar Pujara to Australia. It was one of his career-defining moments, perhaps, sits on top of his achievements on the field. His incredible resistance in the middle helped India bailout from tough conditions and also led to their first-ever series victory. Meanwhile, the former Australian Matthew Hayden hails India’s number 3 Test batsman.

Cheteshwar Pujara was in outstanding form in Australia. Last month, he had bailed India out of trouble with a sublime 123 at the Adelaide Oval. Before that, he scored another half-century in the second innings, which ensured India had enough on the board to secure a historic win. Later, he knocked a blistering 193 to end series on a great note.

I loved how Cheteshwar Pujara went about his cricket – Matthew Hayden

The former Australian swashbuckling opening batsman quoted that Pujara has displayed a fine class against Australians. Further, he asked his country cricketers to take a cue from Cheteshwar Pujara’s Batting technique and garner runs for the country.

Hayden also spoke about the batting change in different eras. He believes that his era was very different to Allan Border’s defensive approach but he strongly stressed that his team has got the solid technique to rattle any kind of bowling attack. Further, he expressed that he couldn’t find a similar attitude in the current crop of Australian cricketers.

“I loved the way (Pujara) went about his cricket,” the 47-year-old told cricket.com.au. “That sort of tenacious batting almost died with the Allan Border era in this country, and that’s no disrespect to that era – they based their game on defence. Our era was kind of born out of that, and people forget that. Most of the players in our generation, whilst considered to be very attacking players, actually had outstanding defensive games.”

”You think of someone like Ricky Ponting – defensively he was as solid as anyone in the game. Justin Langer, Damien Martyn. I think the current Australian cricket batting community has to look at that and say, ‘Look, our first line of attack is defence’. That’s Test cricket, and that’s what Pujara actually showed us so well.”

As Matthew Hayden said, Cheteshwar Pujara has redefined the old technique of batting in Test form of the game. The current Australian batting line-up is very much in need of such consistency from one of their batsmen in the longest form of the game.