Cheteshwar Pujara is a batsman for all conditions: Sanjay Manjrekar

India ended the opening day’s play of the fourth Test against Australia as the front-runners as they managed 304 runs with six wickets remaining in the first innings. A chunk of the credit for the same should go to Cheteshwar Pujara, who scored his 18th Test century and ended the day on 130 runs from 250 balls after coming to bat in the second over following KL Rahul’s dismissal.

He started with a 116-run stand with Mayank Agarwal and then didn’t play any rash stroke. The 30-year-old accomplished his ton, his third in the series, in 199 balls. Prior to that, the Saurashtra batsman didn’t have the best of times. He strained to find his feet in South Africa. Pujara got a century in Southampton during the series against England, but he was far from his best.

Manjrekar lauds Pujara for his brilliance

Nevertheless, he has come off the ranks and has shunned all his critics with the bat in hand in the ongoing series Down Under. In the meantime, former Indian cricketer and current commentator in Sanjay Manjrekar was delighted with Pujara’s performance and he went to say that the batsman has become versatile.

“The questions have been answered and it started with England where he got a century followed by a 70 and then three tons in this series. He’s now a batsman for all conditions. He’ll answer critics like me and sceptics like me,” Manjrekar was quoted as saying in ESPNcricinfo.

Apart from scoring big, Pujara has spent 1135 minutes in the middle and also surpassed the legendary Sunil Gavaskar (1033) for the number of balls faced in a single series in Australia. Pujara has also crossed the 400-run mark in the series and is the current leading run-scorer. Even the talismanic Virat Kohli, also the Indian captain, is nowhere near to Pujara as he is yet to complete even 300 runs in the series.

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