Indian veteran batter Cheteshwar Pujara was not too disappointed after he missed out on a chance to score a hundred in the first innings of the opening Test match against Bangladesh at the Zahur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium, Chhatogram on Wednesday.
Pujara scored a fine knock of 90 runs before he was dismissed on a peach of a delivery from Taijul Islam. There was a good opportunity for Pujara to end his century drought of the last 51 Test innings but he was dismissed half hour before the stumps. Thus, Pujara has now gone 1441 days without scoring a hundred with his previous Test hundred coming back on 3rd January 2019 against Australia at Sydney.
However, the experienced batter played a key role in helping India finish the opening day with a decent score of 278-6. Pujara first added 64 runs with Rishabh Pant after the tourists slipped from 41-0 to 48-3.
Subsequently, Pujara added a fine alliance of 149 runs with Shreyas Iyer to help the team get their noses in front. There is no doubt that it was a difficult pitch to bat on as the odd ball was turning square and keeping low but Pujara once again showed all the gumption to fight it out in the middle.
“Even if it’s just 90, it’s quite valuable for the team. It was a good ball, there was nothing I could have done,” Pujara said after the first day’s play. “I am not too worried about not getting to the three-figure mark. I have been batting well and if I continue like this, hopefully it will come soon.
“Look, the way I was batting and looking at the pitch, it’s not an easy pitch to bat on, so I am really happy with the way I batted today. Sometimes, we try and pay (too much) attention to the three-figure mark but the most important thing when you play this sport is to try and put your team in a position from where we have a chance of winning the game. This pitch looks like there will be a result and we needed some runs on the board, so my partnership with Shreyas was very important. And also with Rishabh once we lost the first three wickets.”
Pujara added it was difficult to bat time on the pitch as there is enough help for the bowlers.
“You can’t bat time on this pitch,” he said. “There will be a ball that will get you out.
“There was variable bounce from the first or second over onwards. The odd ball kept low. The same happened with the second new ball also,” Pujara elaborated. “You are never set on this kind of pitch. You have to concentrate hard for a longer period of time. One ball in an over is turning consistently, so you can’t relax as a batsman. It is still a challenging pitch for batters and I think it will keep getting worse to bat on.”
India is currently 377-7 at the time of writing with Ravichandran Ashwin and Kuldeep Yadav at the crease.
