Pat Cummins hails Cheteshwar Pujara’s slow batting approach in the recent Australian tour

Cheteshwar Pujara has been instrumental in India’s back to back victory against Australia on the Australian soil twice in order to retain the Border-Gavaskar Trophy.

The recent series win against Australia is much special as India were playing with their depleted side in absence of their star studded lineup who were out due to injury.

Kangaroo fast bowler Pat Cummins hails Pujara’s  approach during an interaction with ESPN Cricinfo on the recent concluded tour where the latter scored 50, 77, 25 and 56 runs in last two matches and made sure that India don’t bog down under pressure against regular Aussie side.

“It’s interesting. After the first two games, in some ways, I thought he might have had to adapt to try to take the game on a little bit more and put pressure back on the bowlers. But if anything, he went the other way. He went, ‘No, I know my game so well, I’m going to just bat and bat and scoring will take care of itself’ – whether it’s down the other end or later in his innings,” Cummins said.

Cummins added that Pujara played selfless cricket against them as his focus was to wear off the bowlers when they were bowling good spells and make sure that when lower order comes to bat they can clear the fences against top bowlers. He concluded that the plan worked for India in the fourth innings of the third and the fourth Test of the series, in the best way possible.

“Maybe we set some tighter fields than we did a couple of years ago, but I felt like a lot of the time he was there just to face out the tough spells, bat and bat and bat, and in some ways selflessly take some overs out of the bowlers and the ball, with the hope that the lower middle order can cash in even if he doesn’t,” Cummins added.