The talismanic batter, Cheteshwar Pujara who played 103 Tests for India, decided to draw a curtain to his illustrious career on Sunday. Cheteshwar Pujara stood as the pillar of India’s Test success over the past decade, anchoring the crucial No. 3 position. Cheteshwar Pujara’s grit and consistency were central to several iconic triumphs, none bigger than India’s historic Test series victory on Australian soil during the 2018-19 tour, where he was also named Player of the Series.
Cheteshwar Pujara’s illustrious Test career
Cheteshwar Pujara made his Test debut in 2010, and it took him a couple of years to become one of India’s most dependable players in the format after Rahul Dravid’s retirement. During his illustrious career, he scored 7,195 runs in 103 matches at an average of 43.60, including 19 centuries and 35 half-centuries. His presence at the crease brought solidity and endurance, wearing down opposition attacks and frequently becoming the pillar around which India’s Test innings were built.
The veteran batter made it clear that it was his personal decision to take the retirement from domestic cricket as well. He expressed a desire to create space for younger talents, believing they deserve more opportunities to develop at this stage of their careers.
January 2019. Earlier that month, Cheteshwar Pujara had been the toast of the nation, scoring centuries in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney as India won a Test series in Australia for the very first time. Now he was the villain of all of Karnataka, or at least the few hundred despondent diehards at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium who watched him seal their team’s fate with an unbeaten fourth-innings hundred that steered Saurashtra into the final of the 2018-19 Ranji Trophy.
The bulk of Cheteshwar Pujara’s innings came against the backdrop of chants from these diehards. “Cheater! Cheater! Cheater!” Once in each innings, he had been reprieved by the umpire when he seemed to have edged behind. Both times, he stood his ground and batted on.
But as out of step as he may have seemed, Cheteshwar Pujara was a formidable cricketer who at his peak ranked just below the four great Test batters of his age. Quite a peak it was too; at the end of that 2018-19 Australia tour, he averaged 51.18 and had scored 18 hundreds in 68 Tests
His numbers declined in the pandemic and post-pandemic years, but he was hardly alone in suffering that fate, with Virat Kohli and Ajinkya Rahane going through similarly prolonged slumps as India played Test match after Test match, home and away, in treacherous batting conditions.
And all of that, and perhaps the effects of age on his game, have left many of us with a somewhat diminished image of Pujara the batter. In the tributes from team-mates and former players that have flowed since his retirement announcement, the most frequently used word, by far, is “grit”, and the most frequently evoked image is of the body blows he took during his 211-ball, fourth-innings 56 in the Gabba fairytale of 2021.
And while this meant he stopped scoring hundreds – he only made one in his last 35 Tests – he still made significant contributions to India’s results: two half-centuries spanning 381 balls in the 2021 SCG draw, that aforementioned 56 at the Gabba, a 206-ball 45 in a slow-burning, match-turning century stand with Rahane at Lord’s in 2021, and a second-innings 61 at The Oval in the same series.
Following his retirement, Former India batter Robin Uthappa feels Cheteshwar Pujara ‘overextended his stay’ and stated that should have retired a little earlier.
Robin Uthappa believes that Cheteshwar Pujara’s retirement in Test cricket was a delayed call after English series 2025
Former India batter Robin Uthappa believes that Cheteshwar Pujara ‘overextended his stay’ and should have announced his retirement a little earlier. Pujara decided to retire from all forms of cricket after he was not included in India’s squad for England Tests and was also snubbed from the Duleep Trophy squads. Uthappa praised Pujara for his contribution to Indian cricket when it comes to Tests but pointed out that he should have retired after not getting picked for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2024.
“I think he overextended his stay a little bit. I think it was communicated to him that he will not be considered anymore and this England tour was the final straw. It seemed very bleak for Indian cricket to go back to him, Rahane, at the start of a new cycle. I reckoned when he didn’t get picked in that Australia tour, he could have called it time. But obviously, it is very hard,” he said on YouTube.
Cheteshwar Pujara was a stalwart for India in Test cricket and he scored 7195 runs in 103 matches. However, in the past couple of years, he was not considered for the national side by the selectors. He last played a Test match for India way back in 2023. Uthappa recalled an incident from a domestic match in 2009-10 to highlight Pujara’s brilliance.
Cheteshwar Pujara, known for his patience, resilience, and ability to grind down bowling attacks, he was often India’s wall in overseas conditions. However, his last Test appearance came in 2023, as younger players began to take centre stage in the selectors’ plans. Uthappa also shared a personal anecdote from the 2009-10 domestic season that highlighted Pujara’s single-minded passion for batting.
“I remember it was a first-class game in 2009-10, it was Karnataka versus Saurashtra and he got a triple hundred. He was batting 200-odd end of day’s play. I went early in the morning to have a hit. This guy comes and rocks up at 7:30 in the morning after having scored a double hundred and batted the same amount of time that I batted before going into bat for the game. For him as a personality, he was obsessed with batting and being not out,” he said.
Cheteshwar Pujara hung up his bat with 7,195 runs to his name, scored at an average of 43.60, from 103 Tests including 18 centuries and 35 fifties, which ranks eighth among India’s all-time leading run-getters. He also accumulated 21,301 runs in first-class cricket.
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