Indian expected a long partnership from Cheteshwar Pujara and skipper Ajinkya Rahane, who made their way to the pitch on Day 3, of the third Test in Sydney. Things looked promising until Australia’s ace pacer; Pat Cummins threw a barrage of good deliveries.
Cummins dismissed Rahane first and victimized Pujara just after the latter made his half century. Talking about Pujara’s perseverance on the field, Cummins said, “Today I got a bit of assistance from the pitch. But he (Pujara) is someone you know you are going to have to bowl a lot at.”
“We got our head around that this series, for him to score runs, we are going to make it as hard as possible, and whether he bats for 200-300 balls, we would just try and bowl good ball after good ball, challenge both sides of his bat, and fortunately, so far it has worked,” Cummins said during the virtual post-day press conference.
Later Pujara appreciated Cummins delivery rating it as ‘unplayable.’ Pujara said, “The ball which I got (from Cummins) was one of the best balls of this series. I felt I couldn’t have done anything better, even if I was batting on 100 or double hundred, I don’t think I could have survived that ball which kicked from back of the length.”
“I had to play that ball. There was extra bounce. So it was just one ball which was really good and unfortunately I couldn’t get away from that. You have to accept it. That delivery could have got any other batter.” said Cheteshwar Pujara while speaking to the media after the match.
Pujara, who was the go to man for India during Border-Gavaskar Trophy in 2018-19, didn’t have that an impressive series this time. Pujara has been dismissed four times by Cummins and one time by Nathan Lyon during this series.
