 "Cheteshwar Pujara’s legacy: The stubborn batter who made boring beautiful")
Test cricket is not easy. It is meant to, as the name suggests, test players, their techniques, their temperaments, their courage and the heart they have to get stuck in and not flinch. The format may have become quicker and more result-oriented in recent days, but the core principles remain the same.
And not many embodied that better than Pujara during the 2010s.
He was stoic. He was determined. He showed ample grit. And most times, to the detriment of the opposition, he was stubborn. Stubborn enough to thwart everything thrown at him, and stubborn enough to still be out there. Because when he had the bat in his hand, nothing else seemed to matter to him.
Wearing the Indian jersey, singing the anthem, and trying my best each time I stepped on the field - it’s impossible to put into words what it truly meant. But as they say, all good things must come to an end, and with immense gratitude I have decided to retire from all forms of… pic.twitter.com/p8yOd5tFyT
— Cheteshwar Pujara (@cheteshwar1) August 24, 2025
The stoic craftsman: Pujara’s mastery of patience
That, in many ways, is how people will remember Pujara. It has been a couple of years since he last turned out for India, and this retirement has seemed a while coming. But that does not make digesting it any easier. Because the old-fashioned Test ethos he brought to the table is very much the anomaly these days.
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View AllNot everyone’s cup of tea either, mind you. There will still be those who question if his run-scoring was too sluggish even for an era that had not seen the thrills (and spills) of Bazball, of playing Test cricket like some elongated version of ODIs. But that boring philosophy was mighty effective, and for a long period of time too.
Between October 2010 (when he made his debut) and the end of 2019, he averaged nearly 50, and most of those runs came through engaging the opposition in a game of patience, driven home by the fact that he has the fourth-lowest strike rate among those to have scored a minimum of 3000 runs since the start of 2010.
Pujara ground out attacks. And then ground them out some more. He scored runs, and then scored a few more. All while the oppositions scratched their heads on how to get him out.
Which, of course, helped India. And it empowered Virat Kohli, both the captain and the player, as India monopolised the numero uno spot in the ICC Rankings. India won 38 (out of 62) matches where captain Kohli had Pujara by his side, with the former also averaging more than 54 in those games – a perfect example of how Pujara, by doing the more unfashionable task at No.3, made his team and those around him better.
Debut that defined his grit
But the signs were there long before that. As long back as Pujara’s Test debut. At the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru against Australia, India had reduced the game to a second-innings shootout, having overhauled the visitors’ first-innings score of 478.
The fourth-innings chase, however, was tricky. It got trickier when Virender Sehwag was dismissed in the third over. The stage, you’d have felt, was set for Rahul Dravid to play one of his trademark, backs-against-the-wall (pun not entirely intended) knocks. He did not walk out, though. Pujara did. And it never felt that was the wrong move. Or that he was at the wrong place.
A 72 on debut, in a fourth-innings run-chase that could so easily have become a slippery slope, showed the world what those in the domestic circuit knew – that this was a batter capable of holding his own, irrespective of the opposition and conditions, and especially when the resolve of those involved was supposed to be questioned and ultimately, broken.
If you ever wanted a cricketer to bat in the cold, in brick-oven-like conditions, bat against pace or spin, bat for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, and bat in their sleep, Pujara was that guy.
Pujara, of course, did not enjoy a spotless career. Towards the latter part of his Test career, he struggled. And on those occasions, his propensity to occupy the crease, often at the cost of a decent scoring clip, meant run-scoring became a more difficult gig.
A legacy beyond numbers
But at no point did he abandon those principles, and while that may have put further pressure on his team, it was also what got him 7195 runs in Test cricket – a tally bettered by only seven others in Indian colours.
Not to forget, he was the chosen one to replace Rahul Dravid at No.3, and that is not easy. Just like it was for Kohli, who came in as the batting lynchpin after Sachin Tendulkar, or like it is for Shubman Gill now, replacing Kohli, even though the latter’s numbers had dropped significantly in the last five years.
These positions, because of who occupied them and what they meant to the Indian people, have a different sort of baggage. And while no one can ever replace Dravid, Pujara came very close. Especially during the 2010s.
He did not have the cover drives like Kohli that made you gasp collectively, or the instinctive pulls Rohit Sharma manufactures out of nothing, or the outlandish stroke-play Rishabh Pant is prone to, but when he was at his peak and at the crease, everything just felt under control.
Fast bowlers may have been hurtling in. Spinners may have been turning the ball square. The bounce may have been up and down. But Pujara, almost always, showed the gumption, the courage and the heart to outlast all of them. A Zen-like figure, who waited and waited and waited for a mistake, safe in the knowledge that, more often than not, he would not be the one making it.
Legend has it that Australia are still trying to dismiss Pujara from that Border-Gavaskar series in 2018-19, and that part of Indian folklore will be entirely his own.
This retirement, thus, is not quite the fairy tale finish he would have hoped for, or probably deserved, but a Test average a tick over 43, in an era where batting has become progressively tougher, is not to be scoffed at either.
And most of it was accomplished playing a brand of cricket that may not be very ubiquitous moving forward. There is no blot on Pujara or the new methods coming through. But it might just make everyone appreciate what he did a little more. Adversity was his preferred habitat, and runs, like all top-drawer batters, his ultimate currency.
Knowing Pujara, he will not get drawn into these debates, for the only thing that will matter to him is if he did the job his team wanted him to do. Whether it be taking body blows or putting himself in the firing line so others may have it easier.
And on that count, oh, he did fine. More than fine, actually. Pretty darn good, in fact. Just like he did on his Test debut.
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