Live Score
Cricket Teams
Cricket Players
Cheteshwar Pujara finds an IPL buyer, seven seasons on
It has been seven years since India’s Test mainstay had been picked by an IPL team. For seven seasons, he went unsold at each auction. This year, it was different.
The entire hall broke into spontaneous applause when auctioneer Hugh Edmeades brought down the hammer to announce Cheteshwar Pujara's sale to Chennai Super Kings.
It has been a long time coming. Only in cricket can a giant in the most storied form of the game get ignored year after year in its quick-fire format. It has been seven years since India’s Test mainstay had been picked by an IPL team. For seven seasons, he went unsold at each auction. This year, it was different—CSK bid quickly at Pujara’s base price of 50 lakh when his name came up and got him unchallenged.
“For a long time, he has had a strong desire to play the IPL. It is a good sign that he has finally got the opportunity. When a person gets a platform, he will happily try and do something,” said Pujara’s father Arvind, who is also his coach.
Yet, it’s more than apparent that Pujara has not had the game for T20s—the rock-like No3 for India in Tests has played only 30 IPL matches between 2010 and 2014, with an average of 20.53 and a strike rate of 99.74.
“Mentally he is prepared for it, he has a great cricketing brain" said Arvind, a former Saurashtra wicket-keeper.
One reason for Pujara’s return to IPL could be the nature of the Chennai pitch, which is slow and spin friendly, playing to Pujara’s strengths as a batsman.
This will also give Pujara some much-needed match experience during the summer months. The usual route for him, playing county cricket in UK, may have been complicated this time because of the pandemic. Last year, when cricket was played only in fits and starts, Pujara had to do without any competition before he landed for the tour of Australia in December. That did not stop him from dishing out some of his most brilliant performance in a historic Test series victory.
