Bright future for Pujara

I would like to start this post by thanking Cheteshwar Pujara and the rest of the Indian batsmen for proving me right about Nathan Hauritz, quite emphatically right I might add. After Tendulkar had launched Hauritz for two successive sixes over long-on I almost felt bad for him (but not quite). Australia achieved their first objective by removing Sehwag early, they probably then thought that they could put pressure on Dravid and get into Tendulkar early on. This is when it all started going downhill for Australia, and when Cheteshwar Pujara announced himself onto the global stage quite brilliantly.

Pujara came out at no.3 instead of Dravid, at the time it seemed a strange move but it later turned out to be a masterstroke from MS Dhoni as Pujara set about taking the Australians apart, Hauritz in particular. What Pujara did for India was vital, he grabbed the momentum from Australia by racing to 26 from 22 balls and forced Australia onto the back foot. This is where Australia needed Hauritz to come good, instead he was taken apart (Pujara hit 25 runs from 19 balls of him) going for 76 runs in 12 overs. There were criticisms of Ponting from Warne via twitter but for once I am going to disagree with the great man. Imagine you are in Ponting’s situation, you are facing the best players of spin in the world and you have just chucked the ball to Nathan Hauritz, can you imagine the carnage if he had no boundary riders? The game would have been finished an hour earlier! I think that no matter what field was set for Hauritz, the Indian batsmen would have had no problems.

It is all summed up by how easily he was played by Pujara, here is a guy walking out on his debut having failed in the first innings (failed is a harsh word considering he was undone by a grubber), he must be under a world of pressure and yet he waltzes down the track to the first three balls he faces from Hauritz. Obviously this also shows the class of Pujara but could you see him doing the same thing to Graeme Swann and getting away with it? I can’t. To his credit Hauritz did end up removing Pujara with a beauty however by this point the damage had been done and the game all but won.

Pujara’s knock had everything, it was a simply brilliant innings. He put Australia under pressure by scoring quickly, forced Ponting to set defensive fields then settled in and made sure that he didn’t give his wicket away. When you consider the lad is only 22, it shows how bright a future he has. The fact that he might be dropped for the next game shows just how deep India’s batting reserves are! If I were an Indian selector I would make the big decision to drop Dravid and slot Pujara in at 3. Dravid is 37 and his average over the last two series is not good, this needs to be done if India want to have a smooth transition when Tendulkar and Laxman eventually go.