Cheteshwar Pujara’s patient knock unnerves Nathan Lyon

Cheteshwar Pujara, the 30-year-old Indian batsman has arguably been the best batsman of the series from either side, India and Australia. He isn’t someone, who’ll take the bowling by the scruff of its neck. Rather, he prefers to grill and grind during his stint in the middle. Most importantly, the Saurashtra batsman likes to put a price tag on his wicket and asks the bowlers to take his wicket.

He is presently the leading run-scorer of the series with over 400 runs on pitches, which have posed enough troubles for the batsmen. In India’s fourth Test at Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) where India are working hard in pursuit of their maiden Test series win on Australian soil, Pujara hasn’t let his team down and ended the first day on 130 runs from 250 balls with 16 scorching boundaries.

Apart from that, he also had a little bit of a banter with off-spinner Nathan Lyon. During the course of Pujara’s splendid knock, Lyon asked Pujara whether he gets bored of playing such knocks or knock. “Aren’t you bored yet?” a frustrated Lyon mentioned. However, Lyon’s words didn’t affect the right-handed batsman by any stretch of the imagination and he played until the very end.

Here is the video

Contrasting days for Pujara and Lyon

Pujara, having spent 1135 minutes in the series, broke Sunil Gavaskar’s record (1033) of time spent in the middle in an entire series in Australia. Pujara also scored tons in Adelaide, which also fetched him the Player of the Match award, and in Melbourne. As far as Lyon is concerned, he had to toil hard and could only pick up a single wicket of Mayank Agarwal, who scored 77 from 112 balls.

Going into the second day, Pujara would be looking to score a double century and take his team to a position of command to deny Tim Paine and Co any chance of making a comeback into the match. With the pitch expected to offer assistance to the spinners, Lyon’s role will also be important on Day 2.

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