Cheteshwar Pujara formally quit cricket, two years after his last game for India. In a chat with Aadya Sharma, he looks back at the highs and lows, his method to greatness, and life beyond retirement.
Cheteshwar Pujara was born to bat, and bat long. Now this isn’t a poetic hyperbole. His father Arvind and uncle Bipin played in the Ranji Trophy. His grandfather played cricket before the Ranji Trophy existed, against the British. Cheteshwar never played gully cricket, a rite of passage for children of all backgrounds in India. He watched cricket live from the sidelines, much before he watched it on television. By seven, he was being formally coached at home.
Cricket became his life before he could decide.
“I didn't switch off myself from the game,” Pujara tells Wisden.com, when asked if he took his batting too seriously. “Occasionally, I felt I'm focusing too much on my cricket. I need to find a way to switch off, which I realised a little later, not in my younger years.
“Back then, I was completely focused on the game, even at the end of a day’s play, at the hotel, or even at home when we were playing in Rajkot. The thought was always around cricket”.
Pujara’s wife Puja, writing in her book, explained in detail the exasperation of being with a dedicated cricketer.
“My mind boggled at the realisation that he had not taken a single holiday in his whole life to unwind and snatch a few moments for himself away from cricket,” she wrote about the first few months of her marriage.
“There had been no rapturous care-free, fun-filled trips with his friends, no snatched vacations to relax; his entire existence rotated within the extremely narrow perimeters of his game, unlaced by unworthy mood-lifters like rest and recreation.”
Pujara understood that you’re a long time retired, and now that time has come. His India Test career amounted to 7,195 runs, 19 centuries, an average of 43.60, a founding role in his nation's finest team. With Pujara at No.3, India twice won in Australia, competed in England and South Africa, and dominated at home as almost no side in history has. From the end of 2012 until his final Test in 2023, India won every single series they played at home. Pujara, along with Rohit Sharma, Virat Kohli and R Ashwin, have now departed the scene.
With them, an era ends. Naturally, Pujara was the last to leave.
Set against the flair and flashiness of the IPL, Pujara’s batting could be dour, unnaturally bottom-handed for a player proficient against the red ball. The thing is, Pujara didn’t really conform to the standards of his peers even growing up.
He would train before school hours at his father’s camp and again in the evening, with no exception for Sundays and festivals. Youngsters around found him “rude and selfish”. He was the quintessential “party pooper” as he later admitted, a “misfit” at that.
It wouldn’t have mattered much to Pujara senior, who wasn’t one for unnecessary distraction. He moulded his son into one of India’s finest Test No.3s. He retired with the sixth-most runs by a Test No.3 from any nation, facing, on average, more than 100 balls per dismissal at that position.
The temperament to play long innings was built by necessity.
At Saurashtra, a weak domestic team in the early 2000s, Cheteshwar was trusted to score big. “I realised that the moment I used to get out after scoring 100, then the team used to get bowled out for 180 or 200.
“I realised I need to score big runs. So I started scoring big 150-200s, and that habit carried on from Under-14 to Under-19. When I made my Saurashtra (senior) debut, the team was in the Plate Division (of Ranji Trophy). Again, if I scored big, I could help achieve a win, because Saurashtra was a weaker unit.
“When I made my Test debut, I started taking that responsibility of batting hours and hours, I thought that came naturally to me”.
Pujara wasn’t merely born this way. A deeply religious person, he would pray for hours, which along with yoga and meditation, improved his concentration powers. He immersed himself into the sport after his mother’s untimely demise, barely ever affording himself time off. “On the field, I was normal. I wasn’t grieving for my mother,” he later said.
In a way, his game reflected that. Every ball mattered.
A question closely attached to Pujara’s batting was that of intent. Some felt his style was inflexible, and he could fall in a rut. Even in the 2018/19 Australia tour, arguably Pujara’s best ever, he was in the cross-hairs, with Ricky Ponting questioning him for “locking himself in a bubble”, blaming his slow batting for costing India the SCG Test.
“I was very comfortable with the way I was approaching my innings,” Pujara says of his method. “Yes, there was outside noise, but within my heart, I knew when I'm walking out there in the middle, my job is to ensure that Team India wins as many games as possible, to ensure that we don't also lose a Test match.
“Because in Tests, it's not just about winning, but it's also about ensuring that the opposition team doesn't win a game.”
He ended with 521 runs and three centuries in a historic series win, spending over 30 hours at the crease.
“I had a particular method, and I thought that if I carry on sticking to that method, eventually, I will bring success to the team.
“And if you look over a period of time, people did appreciate the way I batted, because there was a perception around strike rate or the scoring rate. Eventually, if you look at the 2018/19 series in Australia, or 2020/21, that's where people realise that even if you bat in a conventional manner, you still bring a lot about the game and the team's success.
“And that gave me a lot of confidence to bat a certain way”.
By the end, however, run-scoring became too great a challenge, with survival the only achievable goal. From the 28 Tests since the start of 2020, he averaged 29.69. The strike-rate fell from 44 to 37, and he managed just one century in 55 innings.
“I felt during the Covid-19 times, it was a little more challenging with the way I was batting. I was taking a little more time: if I used to say score a 50 in 100 or 110 balls (before Covid), those number of deliveries increased because I was always trying to find my rhythm.
“I didn't end up playing too many first-class games, and as a matter, that was the most challenging time, and that's where I felt that I had to work a bit more on my game.”
The dip was sharper at home, where his average fell to 25. He later explained how result-oriented pitches for World Test Championship points had batters relying on “luck”, with skills taken out of the game.
The course-correction came through a watershed stint with Sussex in 2022. In 13 Championship innings, he cracked five centuries. It paved the way for a comeback that lasted eight Tests, but by the end of the 2023 World Test Championship cycle, India decided to look elsewhere.
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Naturally, Pujara’s batting was compared to Rahul Dravid, his predecessor at No.3. But Dravid was a lot more to Pujara: first a role model, then a teammate and finally a coach. Unknowingly, Dravid also directed his heir to the throne.
“There was a (Ranji) game at Rajkot,” Pujara remembers, “where Rahul Dravid was also there, because of an India game. I interacted with him, and he ended up telling Saurashtra, seeing that I bat at five, he said that if you are a quality player, you should be batting top of the order in first-class cricket. And that's how this journey started. That's how I started batting at number three, and since then, I've been batting at that position.”
When Pujara debuted in 2010, Dravid actually moved down to five, letting the youngster up the order in a chase of 207 against Australia, where he impressed with a well-constructed 72.
By his 11th Test, Pujara had crossed 1,000 Test runs, averaging in the fifties with two double centuries in tow.
For those who might think otherwise, Pujara was extremely keen to play more white-ball cricket. Desperate to ditch the Test-specialist tag, he kept hoping for an IPL gig year after year, “playing aggressive shots to make a case for himself,” as his wife later described. “I would get in touch with agents for the upcoming county season in the month of December each year and Cheteshwar would sign the contract only after the IPL auction.”
The chance never came after 2014, until which he had played 30 IPL games at a strike-rate of 99.74. He did get a surprise bid by Chennai Super Kings in 2021, and went home with a medal without actually taking the field.
One-day cricket suited his style a lot more. Between Saurashtra, his county teams, other domestic outfits, and a handful of ODIs, Pujara played 130 List A games, ending with the third-best average in the format’s history.
“I tried my best,” Pujara says.
“Early in my cricketing journey, I definitely wanted to play all the formats of this game. I was also part of the IPL. Whenever I got an opportunity, I tried my best.”
It was also the time where his knees – both of which had undergone ACL reconstructions – made him a slower presence on the field, pushing his case back further.
“During the off season, I worked a lot on my white-ball cricket. If you look at my List A record, I've had decent success, which suggests my white-ball game was improving. I was doing well. Unfortunately, I didn't get the opportunity at the highest level (he played five ODIs), so that's fine.
“Later on in my career, I accepted that there is a perception, and I'm tagged as a Test player, but I'll take it.
“For me, the ultimate format of the game was Tests, and I didn't want to miss out on an opportunity to be part of the Test squad. I didn't want to sacrifice that and then still work too much towards my white-ball cricket.
“In the last five-seven years of my cricketing career, I accepted the fact that I'll only be playing Test cricket. Yes, even during those times I did, whenever I was representing the Saurashtra team in white-ball or whenever I played white-ball cricket for Sussex in county, I did work on my game to get better in white-ball cricket. But, yeah, at that time, I was at peace. I knew that I wouldn't be picking the white-ball circuit, whether it was IPL or the Indian team.”
Pujara thought deeply about his game: his pre-game analysis delved into the opposition’s data more than his own.
“When you have faced some of the best international bowlers, you know what they try and do, what angles they use, what's their strength, where can they get me out? What is my weakness, and how can I not expose my weakness when I'm going out there in the middle?
“I didn't rely heavily on stats. I also didn't pay too much attention to my own stats. But I was always interested in the opposition teams’ bowlers’ stats.
“Where the majority of their line is, where they try to pitch the ball, what's their length. Someone like Josh Hazlewood would consistently bowl between six to eight meters or seven to nine meters in Australia, and hit that length very often.
“I used to look at those stats and then try and prepare my game accordingly, because I knew that, if he's bowling on that particular length, can I leave on the bounce? How many balls do I need to defend? How many balls are hitting the stumps?
"For me, how many Test hundreds did I score? I actually, at one point, didn't try to focus on that. I didn't remember that. And some people say ‘No, you're joking. You can't seriously not remember the number of Test hundreds you have scored’.
“But for me, honestly, it was just about being in the present. Then, you are focusing on one game at a time, completely relaxed and not worrying about what you have achieved in the past, or what you are going to achieve in the future.”
Pujara was initially primed to play at least one more Ranji season, taking him into his 38th year. Saurashtra have grown leaps since he first started out, and have won the Ranji Trophy twice in the last five seasons. Even between his India assignments, he would find time to play for them.
“I was about to start my preparation for the season, when I thought: ‘will I be able to play the entire season of Ranji Trophy?’ The season is cut into two halves now, you play five games and then there are a couple of games later on in the season. What if Saurashtra qualifies for the knockout: will I be able to play the entire season, and the answer was uncertain. It was more of a no than a yes.”
Speaking to family, he also realised it would be a good cutoff point for a youngster to take his place. “Even if I play another year of Ranji Trophy, it's not going to make a massive difference to Saurashtra cricket, but if a young player gets another year, he will benefit from this opportunity. That's why I thought it's the right time to move on”.
Pujara’s currently undecided on his future: he’s taken up broadcasting roles, but is also keen to mentor youngsters. “It hasn’t been a week since my retirement!”, he says. “I’ll give (coaching) a thought”.
Among his online retirement tributes was a rare personal note from Virat Kohli, who batted 83 times alongside Pujara in Tests. “You made batting easier for me,” wrote his former Test captain.
“I always enjoyed batting with Virat,” he says. “We had some amazing partnerships”.
“If I made his job easier, that’s my job, my duty. Now Test cricket is a lot more positive, but in SENA countries, if the top three perform well, you always have a good chance of putting up 300-350 on the board: that’s how I looked at it. In India, the pitches are different: you don’t rely heavily on the top three, but overseas you do”.
“If your top three perform, it’s easier for four, five and six. And I am happy I have been able to achieve that.”
Pujara is quite content with his Test legacy, and is happy to pass on the baton to a set of players fundamentally different in style to him.
“I feel proud about it, because Test cricket should be played in a certain way, and one needs to stick to their strengths.
“The modern-era batters: their strength is to play shots, that is how they've been brought up. That is how they’ve been brought into the Test squads, because they performed well in the white-ball circuit. They've performed well in T20, IPL or the team.
“And when they come into the Test squad, they start playing their shots.
“They play their natural game, and I have played my natural game because my strength was to defend well beyond the merit of the ball, leave the ball according to the situation and the condition of that game. That's how Test cricket was played in the past era.
“Now things have changed, and one needs to move forward along with that, but I'm proud that I could help achieve some of some of India’s best victories”.
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