England vs India: Nasser Hussain points out the change in Cheteshwar Pujara's approach

The Indian team made a couple of changes for the 2nd Test, undoing their mistakes from the first match, Cheteshwar Pujara was back at his spot, No.3 and young Kuldeep Yadav was included as the second spinner. Joe Root won the toss and asked the Indian batsmen to face his fast bowlers with overcast conditions overhead. Murali Vijay was out in the very first over and Pujara walked out to face the last ball from James Anderson.

Vijay failed to read the ball – it came in towards him with the angle but the seam was pointing towards slips and thus destined to move away. He tried to play an on-side flick and the ball swung late to take his off-stump. Anderson was bowling snakes and it was a tough challenge to survive in such a situation. Amidst that Pujara, who was dropped in the first Test showed a lot of character.

The first ball he faced took an edge but he played it with soft hands and thus it didn’t carry to the fielders waiting behind the stumps. He faced Anderson in the next over, it was outside the off-stump swinging away and also the ones that were in the line of the stumps and straightened after pitching. Pujara dealt with all of that and didn’t commit to the shots.

Pujara seems to have worked on his weakness

He didn’t plant his front foot but played all of the 19 balls on the front foot. Former England captain Nasser Hussain while commentating noticed a change in approach, he said that Pujara would earlier leave a gap between bat and pad and that’s how the ball sneaked past his defence and rattled his stumps. However, this time he has covered up his stumps and the alteration might just do the trick for him and make a difference.

“He plants his foot and leaves a gap between bat and pad, but he also follows the ball, what we call curtain-railing. For a bloke who averages fifty you think they are odd modes of dismissal. He has made a slight change from what I’ve seen today – he is covering his stumps,” Nasser said while talking on Sky Sports.

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