Harsha Bhogle’s column: There is only one word for Cheteshwar Pujara – Stoic

There is much to like about Cheteshwar Pujara. Not just about his batting where not enough has been written (and I hope a lot will be over the next twelve months) but about the person and the way he carries himself. Life has handed him some pretty tough cards over the years; personal losses, injuries and a strange game played over 120 balls have stood arrayed against him. He can only win one of those but has borne the others stoically. That is the word for him. Stoic.

But the tide turns for those that hang in and suddenly, there are warm winds blowing his way. In conditions he likes, and he has been successful in, India play seventeen Test matches. He couldn’t have predicted that if he had the option of writing the itinerary and so, indeed, after six months of hustle and charge and smash, India play a year of pause and assimilate, study and conquer kind of cricket. Pujara kind of cricket.