Cheteshwar Pujara has his own style of batting in Test cricket. He received flak for his strike-rate in the longest format of the game. The veteran believes in old tradition of scoring runs.
Former India fielding coach R Sridhar in his book ‘Coaching Beyond’ revealed an incident when head coach Ravi Shastri was fed up of Pujara’s slow scoring against South Africa in 2019.
Ravi sent a messenger to inform Pujara what he wanted from the batter, who was on 8 off 61 balls.
“Virat and Shastri wanted Pujara to score runs at a faster pace as they knew he had the skills to do it. They wanted to convince him. Ravi had no problem with Pujara’s blocking on a couple of occasions,” Sridhar wrote in his book.
India were in a good position in the Visakhapatnam Test against the Proteas. In the second innings, Pujara was stuck on 8 runs off 61 balls.
“We needed quick runs in the second innings but Pujara was batting slowly despite Rohit Sharma attacking from the other end. Ravi Shastri was furious and told a substitute fielder to deliver his message to Pujara.
“Stop riding a Luna and get on a Harley-Davidson. There was passage of play when Pujara scored faster than Rohit.”