Former India player R Ashwin revealed that he gave Cheteshwar Pujara a nickname which was inspired by the popular show, ‘Game of Thrones’, after his heroics in the 2018-19 Border-Gavaskar series in Australia as well. However, Pujara was the highest run-scorer of the series, scoring 521 runs, which came at an average of 74.42 to help India record a historic 2-1 win. Ashwin recalled how the Australian players were frustrated after failing to take Pujara’s wicket, and Ashwin gave him the nickname, ‘The White Walker’.

“The 2018-19 tour of Australia has to be a defining point in Pujara’s career. He had made a double hundred during England’s tour of India in 2012, but the 2018-19 Australia series, it was a memorable one because the Australia bowlers were not able to get him out. In the last Test in Sydney, the bowlers literally had to tell Pujara to please get out. Literally, it went there,” Ashwin said in a tribute video on his YouTube channel.

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“I gave Pujara a name after that series, we had a good relationship, like we used to pull each others legs. He was pulling my leg on commentary also recently. That is the kind of relationship we have, so the nickname I gave him, inspired by Game of Thrones, was ‘The White Walker’. Literally after that tour, Pujara was the White Walker of Indian cricket, if not the world cricket,” he again shared.

R Ashwin also stated how Cheteshwar Pujara’s contributions were not shown enough, and were lost amongst the praise that star players like Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma received from fans and cricket analysts.

“Whenever we talk about Indian cricket, it is easy to talk about Virat Kohli or Rohit Sharma. Even in the past, it was Sachin Tendulkar, I mean he was an icon, but players like Pujara don’t come around quite often. But, we don’t talk about them too much. That is a bit of a concern,” R Ashwin concluded.