Stuart Broad brushes past Cheteshwar Pujara’s defences to shatter his timber

He was dropped from the team for the first Test, the team management didn’t show enough faith in his ability to tackle the moving ball in England. A dual top-order failure in Birmingham forced the Indian team to go back and slot Cheteshwar Pujara at the No.3 slot for the Lord’s Test. He was involved in a horrendous run out in the first innings and got out cheap. But Pujara put up a much better account of himself in the second essay.

He once again walked in to bat really early in the innings, as Murali Vijay bagged his second duck and completed a pair in the Test match. Pujara was focused, more determined, the odd ball did take an edge or miss it but he wasn’t bogged down. He held his bat up again in front of his face, looked at it, got back into his zone and was ready to tackle the next ball. He played through the first spell from all of English pacers, went back to the dressing room in the rain interval.

He was still in his own element and put his head down and continued after the game resumed in the post-lunch session. Pujara didn’t score a lot of runs but that isn’t even a factor in the Test match anymore. He played out balls and overs that gave India some hope of batting their way out of trouble also hoping for help from the rain gods.

But on a wicket and in conditions where the bowlers were in play right through Stuart Broad produced a beauty in the 27th over. The 84th ball that Pujara faced swung in quite a lot in the air, his bat was coming down with an angle as he was trying to flick it on the on-side that worked against him and he was not in a position to block it. It deflected off his pads and the off-stump was out of the ground.

Pujara once again had to take the long walk back, with just 17 runs to his name. Broad was ecstatic after toiling really hard in the match he was finally getting some movement and he broke the Indian resistance with the wicket of the one batsman who looked really assured.

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