Sabyasachi Bagchi, Kolkata: Neither He has the charismatic image like India skipper Virat Kohli, nor the fans are crazy about him regarding like ‘Hitman’ Rohit Sharma, but Indian Test team’s star batsman Cheteshwar Pujara doesn’t get bothered about these things. He is happy with the tag of ‘New Mr. Dependable’ of the Indian batting line-up. Before going to the all-important South Africa tour, Pujara did some special training at his academy in Rajkot to tackle the bowlers like Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel, Kagiso Rabada and Vernon Philander.
Though the World No.1 test side has the batsmen likes of Murali Vijay, Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane, but the one-down batsman of the Indian cricket team has to handle most of the bouncers on a bowling friendly track. When the whole country was busy watching the grand marriage of Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma, Pujara was busy to prepare himself for the Proteas tour at the ‘Pujara Cricket Academy’ which is 16 kilometers away from his home.
It is known to everyone that, Cheteshwar Pujara’s mentor is his father Arvind Pujara. Arvind who played six first-class matches for Saurashtra, left the game only for his family and started a job in Western Railways. Though only for his passion for the game, Arvind always backed his son to become a cricketer. Pujara always tries to go to their academy with his father to get better practice.
While taking to www.xtratime.in from Rajkot Pujara’s father reveled his daily routine ahead of going to South Africa.” At that time we used to reach the academy as 7am, where he used to bat at the nets from 7.30am to 11am. After taking some rest for two hours, he again practiced from 2pm to 4.30pm,” said Arvind. He continued this process for 20 long days on a matting wicket to improve his batting techniques for the South Africa tour.
On being asked why Cheteshwar did all his practice on a matting wicket, Arvind replied,” The pacers get an extra bounce on this type of wicket. If you are aiming to perform well on a bigger stage, you have to play well against good pacers. That’s why Chintu told me to bring a mat wicket in the academy. The young cricketers used to practice on that type of wicket here. Chintu too did all his practice beside them.” Except that Pujara took throw downs and did his practice in front of bowling machine as well.
Pujara has been performing really well for last couple of seasons. He played 22 Tests in this span and scored 1976 runs with an average of 61.75. Though he didn’t want to take the tour casually.” This is the third Proteas tour of his career. He didn’t perform well in his first outing and returned back home with an injury. Though he had a 153 at Johannesburg but my son haven’t forgotten that he was clean bowled by a cutter of Dale Steyn. He frequently says that if he could manage to concentrate on the delivery India could have saved the Test match. This year the team is more ready and my mind is saying that our boys will do something good in this time,” said Arvind.
Arvind is also confident that his son will get the results for his hard work in this tour too.
In the series during 2014-15 tour of South Africa Pujara scored 280 runs in 2 Test matches with an average of 70. Now Pujara wants to forget that tour and eyeing to take a fresh guard against the Proteas bowlers.