Mister Consistent

We find out what makes Cheteshwar Pujara the hottest property in Indian cricket today.

For someone whose first century in first-class cricket was a triple, it comes as no surprise that Cheteshwar Pujara now specialises in them. Pujara, who is being hailed as the next big thing to have hit Indian cricket, however, puts his penchant for scoring big hundreds down to the simple fact of “not getting out”.

The 20-year-old from Rajkot has, this domestic season, been in great form and has scored a bucketful of runs, including three triple centuries. He led unheralded Saurashtra to the semi-finals of the Ranji Trophy for the second consecutive season. His team came up short against a star-studded Mumbai team which had Sachin Tendulkar in its ranks. “I was disappointed to not make it to the finals, but we gave it our best shot,” says Pujara.

It was six years ago that Pujara made his debut for the Saurashtra U-14 team, and since then he has been nicknamed the “run-machine”.

He got his first triple ton when he was only 13, scoring 306 not out in an under-14 tournament against Baroda. He was also the man of the tournament in the 2006 U-19 World Cup, amassing 349 runs. Last year he got more than 800 runs in the Ranji Trophy. He was picked up by the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for the IPL, though he never got a chance to play. Still, he remembers it as a fantastic learning experience. “Just to be around the likes of Ricky Ponting and Sourav Ganguly in the same dressing room was great.”

Pujara started the 2008 domestic season as he left the last. He notched up three triple centuries — two of them coming in the C K Nayadu Trophy — and one in the Ranji Trophy. In total, he scored over 900 runs at an average of 70-plus.

After such a fantastic season, he is rightly being touted as the one to break through into the Indian test team. Even the chairman of the selectors K Srikkanth told Business Standard in an earlier interview that Pujara was the one to watch out for.

Pujara, however, is taking each day as it comes. “I am happy that my performances are being talked about, but I am not getting ahead of myself.” He seems mature for his age. Or, he probably knows that success in domestic cricket does not necessarily translate onto the international stage as well. Amol Mazumdar and Ajay Sharma are prime examples of that.

When Pujara was eight years old, his father Arvind — a former Ranji Trophy player himself — took him under his tutelage, and Pujara says that he has been the biggest influence on him, apart from his mother, whom he lost three years ago to cancer. “My mother always told me not to worry about the future and to focus on working hard,” something he follows religiously.

Even now, when praise is coming from all corners, he is focused on playing the Duleep Trophy, a competition he lost with his team last year. “We want to go one step better and win it this time.” He says that he has no role models in cricket but has Tendulkar, Ponting, Ganguly and Rahul Dravid as his favourite cricketers. He, in fact, got a chance to chat with Tendulkar at the Ranji semi-final. So what did the batting maestro have to say to him? “He told me the most important thing is to enjoy the game and just keep working hard.”

Pujara is a textbook batsman. Solid defensively, with great technique, which often leads to the myth that such batsmen aren’t suited to the shorter formats of the game. He dispels this myth. “I believe that if you are good in one format you will do well in others as well.” He admits that it is difficult to shift from the longer format to the shortest one, but then “nothing is impossible”. Even when you talk to him, he comes across as a no-nonsense guy, and answers all the questions with a straight bat.

He is still a part of the KKR team and is looking forward to the second season of IPL. “This time around I am hoping to get a chance to show that I can play in the shorter format as well.”

Our chat throws up the question of the inevitable Indian call-up. Pujara seems unperturbed. He says that if you score runs in the domestic circuit you are bound to get noticed. India’s next tour is away to New Zealand in March. And, though Pujara doesn’t say it, you can’t blame him for thinking that after his heroics in the domestic season, he should be on that flight. It will be a deserved call-up, if it happens, and that is when the real test will come.