Australia Test vice-captain Pat Cummins reserved high praise for India’s Cheteshwar Pujara, saying that once India captain Virat Kohli returned home after visitor’s defeat in the first Test of the four-match series in Adelaide, the India no.3 batsman became his most prized scalp for the rest of the matches.
Kohli missed the last three Tests of the series which India won 2-1 as he returned home on paternity leave. Cummins called Pujara the deciding factor in the Test series with his rock-solid performances with the bat.
“My initial thought was that he (Pujara) was the brick wall, so once we opened up his end, I thought that still made all three results in the game possible, winning, losing, or a draw. But it was satisfying too: before the series, once we knew Virat (Kohli) was going to miss the last three Tests, Pujara was the big wicket for me.
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He was the deciding factor in the series a couple of years earlier – he was their rock in the middle order – and I felt a big part of the series battle would be played out against him. He was a huge deciding factor in them drawing Sydney and then winning at the Gabba, so he certainly made a big mark on the series,” the speedster was quoted as saying in ESPNCricinfo’s ‘The Cricket Monthly’.
While Cummins got the better of Pujara five times in eight innings, Pujara made 271 runs while facing 928 balls, which included series-defining contributions in Sydney and Brisbane. India ended up winning the Test series 2-1, which was their second consecutive series win in Australia.
“After the first two games, I thought he (Pujara) might have had to adapt to try to take the game on a little bit more and put pressure back on the bowlers. But if anything, he went the other way.
He went, ‘No, I know my game so well, I’m going to just bat and bat and scoring will take care of itself’ – whether it’s down the other end or later in his innings…a lot of the time he was there just to face out the tough spells, bat and bat and bat,” said Cummins who finished with 21 wickets in the Test series.
Cummins further lauded Pujara, calling him a very difficult customer to bowl to because of his concentration and belief in his own methods of batting.
“With someone who doesn’t look to take the game on, you feel like you can experiment a little bit more, maybe be a little more aggressive in bowling a touch fuller, try to swing the ball, play around with your crease position.
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But on the flip side, if the batter’s good enough to get through that and they can bat and bat, it doesn’t really matter what you bowl at them. It really comes down to the fact that if he doesn’t bat lots of time you feel great and love bowling to him. If he does, you go, okay, well, his method is obviously working,” he said.
Apart from Pujara, Pat Cummins was also all praises for India’s young keeper-batsman Rishabh Pant.
“He (Pant) is a class player, he takes the game on and to the outside, it might look like it’s quite slapdash, but he knows his game really well, he knows when to attack and what his scoring areas are, so before next series, we’ll need to spend a bit of time on that,” Cummins said.
(PTI inputs)
