Chesteshwar Pujara played county cricket for Yorkshire last month. (AP Photo)
WITH THE first Test in Edgbaston only a few days away, you would have expected Cheteshwar Pujara to be the best-prepared batsman. He’d spent nearly a month cumulatively playing county cricket in England. Instead, he is under pressure to retain his spot with KL Rahul breathing down his neck. Pujara managed only 172 runs in 12 innings at 14.33, and went past 40 only on one occasion during his stint with Yorkshire, besides failing in both innings of the practice game against Essex.
In an interview with The Indian Express, Yorkshire’s director of cricket and former England opener Martyn Moxon provides his assessment of Pujara’s disappointing run and the reasons for it while maintaining he has no alarming “technical concerns”. Excerpts:
How do you assess Pujara’s time with Yorkshire this time round?
In the four-day stuff, he obviously didn’t get the volume of runs that we would have expected or we would have liked. He actually did really well for us in 50-over cricket. But at the start of the year, he had a couple of poor LBW decisions and ran himself out as well. That didn’t help him with his rhythm getting into the season. There was so much rain in the early part of the season when he played. The pitches were very seamer-friendly, so it was not easy for anybody to bat long to be honest. There’s a bit of reasoning behind him not scoring the runs. The pitches were a little bit tricky.
He’s been out in all sorts of fashion this season. Did you see something that would concern technique-wise, like last time you worked on his balance, ensuring his head doesn’t fall over the off-side?
No, there’s nothing in particular from the technique point of view. His alignment and balance were fine this time. He worked extremely hard on his game. He was the model professional in that respect. He just didn’t get going. There were times when you thought, this is the day he’s going to go and make a big one. But then he found a way of getting himself out. He’s as frustrated as we were, but there wasn’t anything technical to be bothered about.
What’s really stoked concern over his form is that he was getting out to the seamers a lot while poking at the ball rather than playing it late.
I don’t think so. It was just the moving ball. You look at the scores around the country in that period, there weren’t many batsmen scoring a lot of runs. Since, Pujara played Championship cricket for us, we’ve had a heatwave. There may be less sideways movement during the Test series than what he encountered in county cricket this year.
In his innings against Surrey in Scarborough, he took 42 balls to get off the mark and it looked like he got stuck and was putting a lot of pressure on himself. Did you see it that way too?
It was just the conditions again. From our point of view, he was working extremely hard. Surrey had a good attack and didn’t give him anything to score of. It was the quality of their bowling as opposed to anything Pujara could have done. And then the surprising thing I suppose in that particular game was he’d got through all that hard-work and got to about 20, and then got out caught off an off-spinner. It was an inside-edge on to his pad, caught bat-pad. It was an unusual way for him to get out. It was normally the time where you think he would cash in. But that knock kind of summed up his time with us really.
Unlike in 2016, he was coming off a grand season or two with the bat. Was it a more confident Pujara who showed up this time around?
He was just the same. He is a perfect gentleman. A hardworking professional cricketer and very popular in the dressing-room. That didn’t change at all. There’s a great fondness for Pujara in our dressing-room.
There has been a lot of talk and critique about Pujara’s strike-rate over the last 18 months. Was that something that would bother you about his batting?
At the end of the day it’s how many runs you score, isn’t it? That’s what you are judged on as a batsman. For us, one of the reasons we signed Pujara was that we know he’s going to make the bowlers earn his wicket. He’s not going to give it away. A lot of modern players like to dominate and take the attacking option. Sometimes, there’s a fine line between being attacking and careless. And what we like about Pujara is the value he puts on his wicket. To try and hopefully be someone our more aggressive players could bat around if you like. It didn’t quite work out that way but his style of play was the reason behind him coming in.
Did he have a word with him?
Pujara himself said he was disappointed that he didn’t get the volume of runs in the County Championship. He said ‘I’m really sorry but I tried my best.’ And we knew that. There’s no denying that he gave everything he had. But it didn’t quite work out. He knows that, everybody knows that.
Putting you on the spot here. Would he be in your India playing XI for the first few Tests?
(Laughs) I’m not going to tell the Indian selectors who they should or should not pick. Pujara is a quality player. But I’ve got enough challenges here as it is to get involved with the Indian team selection.