Veteran India batter Cheteshwar Pujara hammered an unbeaten double-century for Saurashtra in his team’s first match of the Ranji Trophy 2024 against Jharkhand. Batting overnight on 157, Pujara went past 200 in the first session of the third day.
Cheteshwar Pujara remained unbeaten on 243 off 356 balls against Jharkhand before Saurashtra declared their first innings for 578 for 4. Prerak Mankad hit an unbeaten 104 as the two batters made light work of the Jharkhand attack.
This is Cheteshwar Pujara’s 17th double-century in FC cricket which brought him level with Herbert Sutcliffe and Mark Ramprakash. He is behind the likes of Don Bradman (37), Wally Hammond (36), and Patsy Hendren (22) overall.
It was Pujara's eighth double-hundred in the Ranji Trophy, where he is second on the list behind only Paras Dogra's nine.
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Pujara also has three first-class triple-centuries, the last of which came against West Indies A in October 2013.
This knock of 243* also took Cheteshwar Pujara past VVS Laxman to aggregate the fourth-most First Class (FC) runs among Indians in the history of the game. Pujara went past Laxman’s 19730 runs in FC.
Sunil Gavaskar leads the list among Indians with 25834 runs followed by Sachin Tendulkar who finished his career with 25396 runs. Rahul Dravid is currently third in the list with 23794 runs followed by Pujara.
Pujara will hope that his good showing in domestic cricket gets him a spot in the Indian team for the upcoming Test series against England. The squad for the first two Tests in Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam is expected to be announced soon.
The veteran player has not been part of India's Test squad since the World Test Championship final in July 2023. Youngster Shubman Gill took the No. 3 spot for India in Tests since but has not been able to put substantial scores on the board.
