File image of Cheteshwar Pujara
Australian Test team captain Tim Paine came up with a cheeky reply when asked about Australia's plans to keep Cheteshwar Pujara quite in the impending Border-Gavaskar series which begins from December 3 onwards at the Gabba.
Pujara was the tormentor and the wrecker-in-chief for the hosts in India's historic 2-1 win Down Under in 2018/19 tour. He scored 521 runs in eight innings with three centuries and one fifty, becoming the highest run-getter in the contest and the third-highest ever by an Indian batsman in Border-Gavaskar trophy history. Hence, Pujara will be the man to watch out for when the series kicks off this December in Australia.
When asked about Australia's plans to get rid of Pujara in the impending contest, Paine replied saying, "I was hoping you might be able to help me with that, to be honest."
Paine, however, gave credit to Pujara and his prowess with the bat last summer while emphasising on the fact that Australia need to score runs to put India under pressure, despite having a good bowling attack.
"We certainly struggled a little bit there last time. But credit to him as well, he played really well. I am not going to go into details but I'm sure that we learned a lot from playing against them last summer. We are a better team now than we were then. Moreover, last time we did not score many runs to put them under pressure at any moment. So as good as our attack is we still need to score a lot of runs to win the series," said Paine.
Last month, Australian pacer Pat Cummins was asked about Pujara as well and he insisted that the team needs to "take their medicine" to outlast the Indian middle-order mainstay in the home series.
"He (Pujara) had a mammoth series for them (in 2018-19). He's one of those players that'll take his time, he's in his own little bubble and he doesn't get disturbed by too much," Cummins told cricket.com.au.
"We've got to find a way to outlast him if he bats the way he did last time. There wasn't too much in the pitch so you couldn't manufacture anything. So I think (we need to) take our medicine a bit more and try and outlast him."
Cummins also hopes for better pitch conditions that suit the Aussie pacer which will aid them to get Pujara out of their comfort zone.
"But we'll wait and see. Hopefully, the wickets are a bit bouncier (and) we've got a few more options," he added.
