India’s legendary batsman Cheteshwar Pujara announced his retirement from Indian cricket on Sunday (August 24). He set several special records in his professional cricketer career, two decades. No batsman, even Rahul Dravid, could not do 500 or more balls in a Test innings. Apart from this, he was the best number 3 batsman of the Indian Test team after Dravid, he scored 90 percent of his career at this position.
Pujara has won 11 wins in SENA Test matches in his career, no Indian has done so much. In terms of the highest first class century for India, he was just behind Sachin Tendulkar (81), Sunil Gavaskar (81) and Dravid (68). He scored 66 centuries in his first class career.
However, Pujara is some of his records that you hardly know about.
First T20 century for Saurashtra
Pujara was the first batsman to score a T20 century for Saurashtra and he made this feat nearly a decade after playing international cricket. In 2019, in the match against Railways in the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy, Pujara scored an unbeaten 100 in 61 balls with 14 fours and a six. This is the only century of Pujara’s 71 match T20 career.
Better List A Average than Virat Kohli
Pujara’s first class cricket figures have been discussed a lot. But do you know that his batting average in 50 overs cricket is more than Virat Kohli. Pujara has scored an average of 57.01 in List A 5759 runs, who are the best among all Asian batsmen, who have scored at least 5000 runs in this format. In this list, only Michael Bevan of Australia is ahead of him. Kohli is an average of 56.81 and Pujara played almost three times more matches. Even after a great average, he did not get much opportunities in India’s ODI team.
The only cricketer to do so
Pujara, who scored a big century, scored his first triple century in first class cricket in November 2008, two years before his Test debut. In the match against Orissa against Rajkot, Pujara scored an unbeaten 302 runs and shared a 520 -run partnership for the fifth wicket with Ravindra Jadeja. This is still the biggest partnership for the fifth wicket in first class cricket.
After this, Pujara scored two more triple centuries in first class cricket. One of which came in an A-Level match for India A. Along with this, Pujara became the first and only player to score a triple century in the first class cricket, representing the ‘A’ team of any country. He achieved this feat in the match against West Indies in 2013 in Hubli.
Five days batting
Pujara is one of the 13 players in Test cricket history who batted for the five days of a Test match. He did this feat in the match against Sri Lanka in Kolkata in 2017. But Pujara is the only batsman in the list of these 13 players who could not score 75 runs despite batting every day of the Test.
Permanent performance in 2006 Under-19 World Cup
Pujara was part of the Indian team in the 50-over under-19 World Cup in 2006 after some time after first debut. He scored the highest 349 runs in the tournament held in Sri Lanka. He was also the Player of the Tournament and Rohit Sharma, Ravindra Jadeja also played with him in this tournament. Who made an international debut in 2007 and 2008 respectively, which went ahead and became the stars of the Indian team in limited over cricket.
