To be a Cheteshwar Pujara in the times of T20s, where bowlers are like menial servants for their batting masters, can be a heartbreaking experience. Here is a batsman who scores runs when all others fail. More significantly, he scores them in conditions which expose the techniques of our “great” flamboyant players, who are feted for having made a meal of flat tracks.
Give them wickets where the ball moves, bounces or spins a bit more, and these celebrated batsmen play like novices searching for the ball as if they are suffering from myopia.
Watching Pujara bat against Sri Lanka at the seaming, swinging Eden Gardens, was a sheer pleasure; a reminder that there is no better sight in cricket than seeing a batsman showcase his skills in conditions that overwhelmingly favour bowlers.
It is a rare sight these days, especially when wickets are being tailor-made for batsmen. All those sixes and fours hit, and centuries scored at a pace difficult to keep track of, give an exaggerated impression of a batsman’s talent.
Every innings played and each shot is eulogised with epithets like “great and greatest”, without any sense of proportion. The language of hyperbole is the order of the day, which keeps the cricket industry healthy and running.
The television industry needs the well-oiled massage of TRP ratings to sustain itself. The best way to do this is to entice viewers with a well-orchestrated campaign that showers fours and sixes, day in and day out.
Forgotten in this well-rehearsed script is the fact that any sporting contest that survives by deliberately creating conditions favouring only one set of skills over the other is blatantly unfair and should be condemned.
That is the reason why Pujara — by far the best Indian batsman in terms of technique, temperament, and runs — has had to suffer many indignities before becoming a permanent member of this Test team.
He was dropped on the pretext that he was slow and that he broke the aggressive rhythm built by his “flamboyant” teammates. Complicit in this shocking evaluation of India’s best batsman were the present captain and coach of the team.
It is only a combination of injuries to other players and the failure of his substitutes whenever conditions were hard to bat on that Pujara was reinstated. He has never looked back after that, scoring runs in conditions where most others have failed.
That brings us to the next question. Why is a man of Pujara’s talent and solid scoring ability not a part of the T20 jamboree? Is he too lethargic, sloppy, and slow, that he is unfit to play at the frenetic pace the shortest version of the game demands?
Going by the fact that he is not a part of IPL teams, nor of the Indian one-day or T20 side, this may seem to be the case. Or is this a manufactured impression which suits those who want the world to believe that a genuine Test batsman is too old-fashioned and can’t cope with the demands of the “new” cricket world?
By treating Pujara as a one-format wonder, we are not only being unfair to his great skills and hard work, but also reflecting our bias which treats Test cricket as an appendage of its shorter versions and not the other way round; a financial burden whose weight can only be carried on the shoulders of the money-spinning one-dayers and T20 contests.