The Indian Test specialist, Cheteshwar Pujara’s first outing with the bat on this tour of England ended with a duck as he was bowled by Mohammed Shami on Day 2 of the four-day warm-up between Leicestershire and Team India. Pujara, one of the four Indian players, representing Leicestershire, played five balls before he dragged the sixth one onto his stumps.
With this, Leicestershire lost their second wicket for 22, as Mohammed Shami celebrated his second scalp with his Indian teammate. After dismissing Pujara, Shami came jumping and hugged the batter from behind, giving him a rather warm send-off. Pujara took it sportingly as he had a wry smile on his face while walking back to the change room.
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Pujara, who was dropped from the Indian Test set-up after the tour of South Africa and missed a couple of Test against Sri Lanka, returned to the squad for the England tour. This was due to the red-hot form that Pujara showed in his county stint, where he peeled off hat-trick of centuries for Sussex.
Here is the video of the wicket taken by Mohammed Shami:
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Cheteshwar Pujara is all set to return to the Test side for the rescheduled 5th Test against England in Birmingham. He fought his way back to the Test team after scoring aplenty in the county season during his stint with Sussex. He managed to score 720 runs in 5 matches, which included 4 centuries, including a double hundred.
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Pujara has been training with the Indian Test team in Leicestershire after arriving in the UK on June 16 with the rest of the Test regulars. In a recent interview to the BCCI, Pujara spoke about bouncing back and said he knew ‘everything was back to normal’.
Cheteshwar Pujara said, “The most important thing was playing so many First-Class games. I was preparing for this when I was playing back home before I joined Sussex. In the three games I played for Saurashtra in the Ranji Trophy, I found my rhythm, knew that I was batting well. It was about getting a big score and so when I had that in my first game, I knew that everything is back to normal now. (I was) finding my footwork, the back lift was coming along well.”
