India vs Australia: How minor technical tweak transformed Cheteshwar Pujara's fortunes Down Under

Few minutes after Cheteshwar Pujara had reached his third century of the series, Nathan Lyon walked past the Indian No 3 and asked, “Aren’t you bored yet?” The question by Lyon might have been rhetorical, but it summed up the Australian mindset. At stumps, Pujara had ground the Australian bowlers into the dust. Unbeaten on 130, he had faced 250 balls, batted for six hours and 22 minutes and hardly played a false stroke. During his long tenure at the crease, he had negotiated Lyon with ease and his wise plan of kicking the off-spinner away whenever he wasn’t quite to the pitch of the ball had frustrated the daylights out of the ace bowler. Pujara has now scored 164 runs from 364 balls against Lyon this series and has been dismissed only once. India’s best batsman has negotiated Australian greatest threat. But spin has never been a big issue for Pujara throughout his career. It is the slight inward movement that had proposed a challenge. In Sydney, Australia tried that tactic, but Pujara was irremovable. The Australian bowlers tried hitting his stumps, attempted smashing his front pad with the ball that jags sharply off the seam and also strived to unsettle him with a barrage of short balls. Pujara repelled all the plans. [caption id=“attachment_5829841” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Pujara scored his third ton of the tour on Thursday. AFP[/caption] When Pujara is in such form, it is difficult to dislodge him, the only real flaw in his technique is that his back leg collapses even with a perfect front-foot defence. He has the tendency to leave a slight gap between bat and pad. James Anderson exposed it during the England summer by trapping him LBW with that incoming ball. Pujara was dismissed three times in that manner in England. But the greatness of Pujara lies in the way he has depreciated that mode of dismissal Down Under. Apart from the low shooter that removed him in Melbourne, he has not been LBW or bowled in his seven innings thus far. So what has he done? There have been minor adjustments, but at the same time, the lack of seam movement or the swing through the air has allowed him to eradicate that form of dismissal. Pujara has made a conscious effort to rectify the issue. In England, Pujara was planting his front foot slightly more towards the off-stump. In Australia, he has been keen to stay more leg-side of the ball and his front foot he getting planted only on or around middle stump. This slight change has enabled his bat swing to be straighter. While his bat was starting from wide of first slip in England, it is now a lot closer to the wicketkeeper. This means even if the ball has seamed it more than he has expected, he is able to play it towards the bowler rather than mid-on. It has also allowed him to get his head further towards the ball and not be stuck on the crease. These are just minor changes, but it has prevented the Australian fast bowlers from getting that ball through the gap. Additionally, it has also led to Pujara playing those balls through the on-side, either by the virtue of a boundary or a single. Close to 60% of his runs off the faster bowlers had come through the leg-side. The other benefit Pujara has had by preferring to stay more leg-side of the ball is that it has opened up more scoring opportunities on the off-side. Today was the tightest line the Australian bowlers had bowled to him, but he still managed to score 25 runs off the backfoot through the off-side. Not only had Pujara eliminated a slight error in his defence, but he had also found another scoring zone, especially when the Australian pacers pulled their length back. As Mayank Agarwal stated after the play, “The way he grinds the bowlers, he’s got a pattern to it, he understands his strengths, he sticks to that, he knows he’s very tight with his defence.” There has been no seam movement in the pitch or to get him out the ball needs to pitch on a dime. But the fact that Australia has not gone looking for it in the first two Tests was probably a lacking of planning on the Australian bowler’s behalf. Australian bowlers are hard workers, but throughout the series, they have rarely gone wide of the crease and tried exposing that gap. In the first two Tests, they were keen to kiss that outside edge rather than probe the inside edge. It took Australia two Tests to change their approach, a large part of that was also a result of the nature of the pitches. By then Pujara had a belief is his minor adjustments and anything on the line of the stumps was negotiated comfortably. Cricket is a game of fine margins and Pujara’s minor alterations were adequate to conquer a part of his game that the opponents have tried to expose. The Australians might be bored, but not Pujara.