COLOMBO:Cheteshwar Pujara’s script is irresistibly Thomas Hardy-ian — the long exiled, undervalued protagonist returning in the darkest hour to rescue his lady love. He fits Hardy’s prototype-hero — virtuous, rustic, patient and austere. All of these virtues shone through his glowing piece de resistance. He’s not your raved, usual hero, oozing magnetism or look-at-me machismo, saving his beloved from a bunch of ruffians with gravity-defying stunts. He is essentially a Victorian cricketer caught in a T20-era time warp.
Any Test hundred in isolation is a credible accomplishment in itself. Factor in the series-deciding context of the match, the hostile traits of the surface, his tormented batting colleagues, and the insistent threat of Dhammika Prasad, and the value of his effort doubles. On a day when Amit Mishra was the second highest scorer, and no specialist batsman went past 26, Pujara accounted for more than 40 per cent of the team’s first-innings total, which if the pitch continue to throw tantrums, could be of match-winning dimensions.
Weave into the already undulating plot, the hero’s fall from grace. Touted the natural protégé of the peerless Rahul Dravid, he smoothly transitioned into the great technician’s spot, only for his fallibilities to be ruthlessly exposed in New Zealand, England and Australia.
From being labeled the ripest among the current crop of batsmen in late 2013, his stocks plummeted so steeply that he was carrying drinks by the end of the trip Down Under, with another return to the congested top-order looking exceedingly bleak by the day. Like the Hardy-ian hero — shunned as an outcast.
His self-belief itself had taken a beating before the man he succeed himself gave him a pep talk. “Before the India A match (against Australia), he told me he didn’t find anything deficient in my technique and it was just a case of me not converting starts. He assured me I’m due for a big knock, maybe in the Sri Lanka series or sometime later,” said Pujara.
Parallel to his fall was the rapid rise of fresh lead men like Ajinkya Rahane and KL Rahul. He was now the forgotten hero. The almost lost hero. But it’s this thread of pathos that makes the narrative compelling. It’s invariable that the hero returns, at a time when you needed him most. So came Pujara to his team’s dire need.
He had nerves — illustrated by uncertain foot work and tetchy judgment outside off-stump in the first hour. He got himself into tangles, an outside edge fell perilously close to the slipsman, he couldn’t get behind the line of the ball, he defended from the crease and was unsure of Prasad’s variations.
But he was an exiled hero on comeback. He couldn’t expect a pleasant welcome. And he steered through the storm by the sheer gift of his grit. “I just wanted to play as close to my body as possible. If I had thought of things like ‘I haven’t scored big runs of late or it wasn’t my favourite position’, maybe I wouldn’t have scored these many runs. I shut my mind out from such thoughts. It was a difficult wicket to bat, and for some time we thought we couldn’t get anything away,” he admitted.
Then arrived the spinners, and he tucked into them like the man on a desert seeing a well-spring. He creamed Tharindu Kaushal for three successive boundaries, and of the 127th ball he faced, completed his half-century. He skimmed and smothered the spinners with ease — as many as 83 off his runs came through singles, doubles and threes.
Then we all saw what we are so accustomed to seeing from him. Pujara upped the scoring rate, reached his hundred and insatiately carried on. Like a typical Pujara knock, he sprinted in the middle phase of his knock — from 32 in 116 balls, he raced away to 83 in 171, that is 51 runs in 55 balls. Apart from a reprieve on 117, his was a chanceless effort, and when Prasad returned in the evening, he slammed him through point.
So the Hardy-ian hero is back. And let’s enjoy him for what he is.