Former Indian batter Robin Uthappa believes Cheteshwar Pujara delayed his retirement decision a little bit. Pujara recently announced his retirement from all forms of Indian cricket. Uthappa reckons Pujara could have called it a day when he was not picked for the five-match Border-Gavaskar series against Australia.
Pujara played 103 Tests and 5 ODIs for India after making his debut back in 2010. He scored 7,195 Test runs at an average of 43.60, with 19 hundreds and 35 fifties.
“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,” Robin Uthappa said on his YouTube channel.
Uthappa recalled a first-class match when Pujara turned out for the nets on the next day despite scoring a double century a day earlier.
“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 stated.
On the other hand, Uthappa also revealed how Pujara’s father played a key role in developing his son’s stubborn nature.
“Pujji came from the opposition side of the administrative side that ran Saurashtra cricket. He was one of the son’s of the administrators on the other side. For him, growing up, his dad told him it doesn’t matter how many runs you score, you just cannot get out,” he said.
“So, literally through Under-14 and Under-16 cricket, he did not get out and that tells you a story of how he developed himself as a player. That is the foundation on which his cricket was built. You have to be stubborn at a very deep level and that is why he had the resilience,” he added.
Overall, Pujara finishes with 21301 runs from 278 first-class games at an average of 51.82 and 66 hundreds and three triple hundreds.
