Cheteshwar Pujara says why ‘scoring big’ had to develop into a habit in latest episode of Wednesdays with WV

Indian cricketer Cheteshwar Pujara spoke about his starvation for runs and penchant for scoring massive, which made him an everyday within the Indian Test set-up, throughout a dialog with WV Raman in his weekly present Wednesdays with WV on  Sportstar. 

India’s eighth-highest run-getter In Tests with greater than 7000 runs, Pujara has been the spine of the Indian middle-order within the longest format of cricket. 

Although the Saurashtra batter finds himself out of the senior staff, the 35-year-old continues his laborious grind in England, representing Sussex within the County Championship.

“When I was playing junior cricket, I didn’t get picked for the U-15 and U-17 teams, although I had scored a lot of runs in age group cricket. For some reason, I didn’t get picked for the Indian team. I thought these runs weren’t enough and that I needed to score more runs, so I started scoring big runs in U-19s, got picked, and then it became a habit,” Pujara defined when requested about his want to attain massive runs when he was youthful.

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“I had a good time making my debut for the Saurashtra team in 2006. I scored runs in my debut game, and it continued, and I began scoring runs even in the Ranji Trophy,” he added.

A star-studded Indian lineup didn’t make life simpler for the teen again then.

“I was a decent scorer for one or two seasons, but those runs were not enough because we had a great team with the likes of Gautam Gambhir, Virender Sehwag… Rahul (Dravid) bhai used to bat at number three, Sachin  Paaji (Tendulkar) at four, and VVS Laxman at five. So, there was no way for me to get into that team,” mentioned Pujara. 

“But the only thing I could have done was be a part of that squad… I told myself that if I’m only scoring six or seven hundred runs in a season, that’s not good enough. Maybe I need to score more, and that’s how I started scoring big double hundreds and triple hundreds,” he concluded.

Watch the complete interview right here –