In 2007, three years before Cheteshwar Pujara made his debut, Indian social theorist Ashis Nandy remarked that Test cricket was one of the last surviving critiques of the industrial revolution. His point was that, besides its tenacity of focus stretched over five days, it was open to the possibility of no result (a draw), and negated the pull of numbers. All this ran counter to the result-oriented eddy of industrial push. In a year in which T20 cricket had arrived on the international stage, Nandy’s comment was seen as a cerebral lament. But, something important was left unsaid in that pithy take on the longest version of the sport – how it rewarded concentration. It did serve Pujara for a good part of his Test career. But, far less talked about is how it deserted him in the last leg of his career. And more importantly, why did the drift keep getting only wider? 

Pujara’s entry to the Test eleven in 2010 coincided with a time when top-order Test batting in India, barring exceptions like Rahul Dravid,  wasn’t much loaded with specialists. It was also a time when a few all-format stalwarts were playing out their last years, and one all-format superstardom was on the way in the form of Virat Kohli. Amid the race to have hybrid berths in the team – playing both red and white ball cricket, his identity as a Test-only player wasn’t total to begin with. He did appear in a few limited-overs games, but not many. The Test specialist tag stuck to him far more stubbornly than to someone like Ajinkya Rahane, who even went on to lead his IPL team. By the time Pujara was viewed as a Test specialist in the top order, one aspect became increasingly clear – it had more to do with his grinding approach to crease occupation rather than his technique. 

His shuffle across the crease, even if the head position was steady and fine, unsure feet movement, and initial tentativeness against the moving ball weren’t the ideal base for a number three. But his immense power of concentration and the ability to grind the bowling with unwavering focus, something he carried from his prolific years in the domestic circuit, helped him plug the holes of technical deficit. That stood out more in an era when the shortened version of the sport meant capacity for unflappable focus is in short supply. His prolific run in the initial years was largely attributable to his staying power, and obviously aided by improvement in technical skills. But, at the end of his career, he would believe that he could have gone far above  43.6 average from 103 Tests – impressive, but not if you are setting that minimal 50 benchmark for contemporary greats. Even if statistics don’t tell the whole story, that’s a bar that even Virat Kohli would miss not touching. 

Even the commentary and tributes that have followed his announcement have rightly talked about his ability to occupy the crease. There has been less dissection of why it was less in play in his last few years. For instance, his uncharacteristic dismissals in the last Test he played at the Oval against Australia in the WTC final mirrored the flaw that had crept into his craft. In the first innings, to a Cameron Green’s angled-in delivery, Pujara attempts a steer down towards gully – hesitant and lacking clarity of movement and purpose, and nicks it to keeper Carey. In the second innings, all of a sudden, he goes for a cut of an off-break from Nathan Nyon – an attempt to impose in an unwarranted moment, and gets too cramped for space to do so. Both dismissals aren’t the type you would associate with Pujara, with a definite clarity of purpose and trance-like concentration. 

But such cracks in his power to grind time at the crease had started to appear earlier. In his last Test series against England on English soil, he wasn’t that sure against the moving ball. Stints with the English county team, mostly with Sussex, had raised expectations of more technical preparedness and longer vigil at the crease. In the end, he had only a modest outing, averaging 34 runs in the 2021 series. In the same season, in South Africa, his out-of-the-stump vigil was found wanting. In New Zealand, his dismal run of 100 runs, averaging 25, in the 2020 two-test series, came under scrutiny for vulnerability against the moving ball and a cluttered approach to handling it.

The fading of his clarity at the crease, his tenacity being a key part of it, can be seen through a number of technical prisms-some real, some perceived. But what was increasingly becoming evident was that the clutter had set in on how he looked at his innings. His craft of grind and patience clashed with a time when even in Test cricket, the pressure to keep a tempo of scoring had come to have bearing on how the innings was moulded. There were tangential hints of his approach slowing down the innings, putting pressure on other batters, and leaving less time for bowlers to bowl out the opposition twice. Did that tinker with how he approached his innings and lead him to try other methods of constructing his stay at the crease? More significantly, did that dent the clarity that defined his essence as a resolute defensive craftsman at the crease? 

One may never know, but one can be sure that there was more than a tinge of clutter that had crept into how Pujara played the last part of his Test career. Even if one assumes that as part of his late adjustments and evolution as a Test batsman, it’s hard to miss that it undid the core of his resolute craftsmanship – his immersive ability to concentrate. Bereft of monk-like concentration, the Saurashtra batsman was no longer quintessential Pujara, the grinding man at the crease.

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