Team India’s World Test Championship (WTC) 2023-25 cycle is all set to get underway with the two-match Test series against the West Indies, starting July 12 in Dominica.
For the West Indies series, the BCCI selection committee announced India’s 16-member squad last month. While the team included some fresh faces like Ruturaj Gaikwad, Yashasvi Jaiswal and Mukesh Kumar, there was a notable omission as well.
Veteran batter Cheteshwar Pujara was left out of the Test side. His exclusion came after failure in the World Test Championship (WTC) 2023 final against Australia. He managed to register scores of 14 and 27 in the marquee clash at The Oval as India lost the match by a huge margin of 209 runs.
Reacting to his snub, legendary spinner Harbhajan Singh has said that India haven’t shown enough respect to Pujara who has been quietly doing the ‘dirty work’ to help others around him flourish.
“I have a lot of respect for Cheteshwar Pujara for what he has achieved," Harbhajan told news agency PTI. “He has been an unsung hero of the Indian team for many years now. He has been one of those pillars of strength for India, doing the dirty work of hanging in there, making sure other batters got their comfort."
“I believe he needs to be given a bit more respect than what he has been given and the way he was chucked out of the team was a surprise for me. Because he isn’t the only one not scoring runs. There are others as well who play in that same team who are scoring runs at same average," he added.
In the past, the Indian team management had expressed concerns over Pujara’s rate of scoring in Test cricket. However, Harbhajan feels the team needs someone who can play Test cricket the normal way in conditions where batting is slightly difficult.
“In case of Pujara, we keep hearing about his strike-rate of scoring runs in Tests but because of that strike-rate, the wickets remain intact and that’s a huge contribution," Harbhajan said.
“So you have to see which guy is contributing what. You need to see how much the team needs him. In my opinion, the team still needs him. When you go abroad (SENA countries), you need one such batter as you can’t have everyone playing strokes all the time. You need someone who plays normal Test cricket, just like Chesteshwar Pujara," he further remarked.
