IPL auction snub a blessing in disguise for Cheteshwar Pujara
On Sunday afternoon, as the Indian Premier League juggernaut prepared to move from Mumbai to Kolkata, Cheteshwar Pujara posted some pictures of him and wife Puja with the Eiffel Tower in the background on his Twitter handle.
‘Quaint cosy cafes, walks on beautiful streets and great company in Paris,’ he wrote under the photos. Just a week ago, Pujara had finished a bumper stint with county side Sussex and had more than earned for himself a celebratory jaunt across the English Channel. Hours later, on Sunday evening, he returned to the India squad that will travel to England in June for the final Test of the five-match series – which had been postponed last year – and will now be played from July 1 in Birmingham.
But the other veteran batsman who had been dropped along with Pujara for the home Tests against Sri Lanka in March, Ajinkya Rahane, hasn’t made it back.
The fates of the two middle-order stalwarts had been seemingly intertwined for quite a while. Their struggles to post big runs had played out in parallel; they had fought against their fading fortunes with a brave, counter-attacking century partnership in the second innings of the Johannesburg Test against South Africa at the start of the year. Nevertheless, time had appeared to run out when the national selectors opted to try out fresh talent for the Sri Lanka Tests.
#TeamIndia Test squad for the fifth rescheduled Test against England 👇👇#ENGvIND pic.twitter.com/USMRe0kj1i
— BCCI (@BCCI) May 22, 2022
In February, the IPL auction had taken place, where both Pujara and Rahane had put in their names. Pujara would go unsold, and it had seemed even Rahane would, before he was picked up at his base price of Rs 1 crore, the sole bid coming from Kolkata Knight Riders. And that is where, in hindsight, the duo’s fortunes diverged.
the time Pujara began his county stint against Dershire on April 14, Rahane’s IPL season had ground to a halt after only 80 runs at just a-run-a-ball strike rate from his first five matches. From their sixth game on April 15, KKR would drop Rahane. And the time he got his next game, on May 9, Pujara had racked up a sequence of 6, 201 not out, 109, 12, 203, 16 and 170 not out in four matches.
Quaint cosy cafes, walks on beautiful streets and great company in Paris 😍 pic.twitter.com/pJVJePy2mx
— cheteshwar pujara (@cheteshwar1) May 22, 2022
A 95-Test veteran churning out doubles and daddy tons in the country where the team is set to play a series decider – the timing, weight and significance of Pujara’s runs forced the selectors to bring him back. As he told this paper on Sunday, had he been picked up some franchise at the IPL auction, he may not have got to play even a single game in the IPL, and would have been confined to net sessions. Now that he is back in the national squad, and given his vast experience in English conditions, it is hard to envisage his name not being on the team sheet at Edgbaston on July 1.
Mayank dropped
With KL Rahul returning to the Test squad as vice-captain, and Shubman Gill retaining his spot as well, Mayank Agarwal has been left out. Agarwal opened along with skipper Rohit Sharma in the Sri Lanka Tests and had managed underwhelming scores of 33, 4 and 22. Before that, he had had a tough tour of South Africa, where he could average just 22.5 in six innings. Meanwhile, Gill hasn’t played a Test since December, when he had a reasonably decent outing in the New Zealand home Tests, with scores of 52, 1, 44 and 47. In a Test squad without any major surprises, fast bowler Prasidh Krishna has been rewarded with a spot. Krishna has played seven ODIs so far and averages 17.61 for his 49 first-class wickets.
India Test squad: Rohit Sharma (captain), KL Rahul (vice-captain), Shubman Gill, Virat Kohli, Shreyas Iyer, Hanuma Vihari, Cheteshwar Pujara, Rishabh Pant (wk), KS Bharat (wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Shami, Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Siraj, Umesh Yadav, Prasidh Krishna
