'He watched all the videos of last series. Never made things easy for me': Pujara's high praise for 'world-class' bowler

Cheteshwar Pujara has tired out the best of the bowlers around the world, but every great batter has an equally genius bowler waiting for him.

Cheteshwar Pujara has made bowlers toil with his patient batting. India's No. 3 batter can soak pressure like a sponge. Every time he walks out to bat, the bowlers know they have a tough task at hand. Unlike most of the modern-day batter, Pujara relishes in grinding the opposition and has rather excelled at it. During the 2018-19 Border-Gavaskar Trophy, Pujara played out 1135 balls en route to scoring three centuries. The man is an epitome of patience when it comes to batting.

Cheteshwar Pujara in action. (Getty)

Pujara has tired out the best of the bowlers around the world, but every great batter has an equally genius bowler waiting for him. In Pujara's case, that tag can be attributed to Australia spinner Nathan Lyon. Hailing Lyon as a 'world-class bowler', Pujara explained how the off-spinner was one step ahead of him in the 2020-21 Test series between India and Australia.

"He is a world-class bowler. He knows what my game plans were. This time he had watched all the videos from the 2018-19 series. He had made some adjustments and was up for this challenge because his pace was different, lines were different. He was expecting me to step down every second ball, which was very good of him. He never made things easy for me. He countered my gameplan," Pujara said during the docu-series 'Bando Mein Tha Dum' streaming on VOOT.

Pujara was the star of the show for India in 2018-19, scoring 521 runs from 4 Tests, the following series wasn't as prolific as far as run-scoring was concerned. But still, a gritty Pujara gutted it out and scored 271 runs with three half-centuries, as his knocks is Sydney and Brisbane proved to be huge turning points in the two Tests. But this time around, Lyon dismissed Pujara only once, while Aussie speedster Pat Cummins got his wicket five times.