Cheteshwar Pujara, one of India’s mainstays in the Test format, spoke to NDTV and revealed how Team India managed to break Australian bowlers’ game plan that helped the visitors script a memorable series win Down Under. Pujara, who is known to play marathon innings, told NDTV that the plan after registering their lowest ever Test score was to build partnerships. Pujara was criticised by many for his slow batting but the middle-order batsman said that to break Australia’s bowling plans, playing with a lot of patience was the need of the hour.
“Credit goes to Australian bowlers. They study your batting, they assess a lot of videos and then they come up with a plan. To break that, you need lot of patience, you need to figure out things to break such game plan,” Pujara told NDTV.
The 33-year-old batsman also added that it was his responsibility to weather the storm and make life easy for the other batsmen.
“When things are difficult out in the middle, you don’t want to throw your wicket away and put the team under pressure. When someone plays a long innings, it helps the other batsmen who are walking in next,” Pujara added.
India were put under pressure early in the four-match series after they posted their lowest Test score of 36/9 in the second innings in the first match, thanks to a dramatic batting collapse in Adelaide.
India lost the match by eight wickets.
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Pujara said that the team was disappointed with the result in Adelaide, but they decided to move on and started to look at the series as a three-match contest.
“It was very difficult to accept our low score in Adelaide. We took the rest of the series as a three-match series,” he concluded.
