Virat Kohli reveals why Cheteshwar Pujara is referred as the ‘White Walker’

Not too long ago, Cheteshwar Pujara was faced with an uncertainty in the Indian team, even in Tests. The man had gone to England prior to the high-profile series last year while most others were busy playing the Indian Premier League but found himself out of the team when the first Test started. Prior to that, his twin run-outs in a Test match in South Africa earned him a huge backlash.

Pujara made those low moments count and came up with a hammer instead of a bat in the third foreign trip of the year – Down Under. In the run-scorers’ list, the Saurashtra batsman outsmarted everybody else, including his own skipper Virat Kohli. Pujara slammed three hundreds in four Tests in the recently concluded series which India won 2-1 to register their first away win in Australia.

There was no second thought on who the man of the series would be and now, the soon-to-turn 31 batsman has been conferred the title ‘White Walker’ of ‘Game of Thrones’ fame by none other than his skipper. Praising the success of Indian cricket’s new ‘Wall’, Kohli said either fire or a special dagger could kill Pujara but no cricket ball can damage him, signifying the invincibility the latter has acquired now while batting in red-ball cricket.

Pujara scored 521 runs in seven innings in Australia with the highest score of 193 and played over 1,300 balls during the entire series. It was his first hundred on Day 1 of the first Test in Adelaide which saw India taking a giant stride in the series.

“We’ve named him ‘White Walker’ from Game of Thrones because there’s only either fire or that special dagger that can kill him. I don’t think bowlers or cricket balls are going to do any damage to him. At the moment, he is unbreakable so we named him White Walker,” Kohli told bcci.tv in an interview.

Pujara works hard and never questions team management call

“Pujara is one guy, who is very sure of his own ability. He never questioned any of the calls that team management took. He took it in a stride and realised himself that whatever feedback was given to him by the management, there were things that he himself wanted to work on.”

Speaking about Cheteshwar Pujara’s exclusion from the side in the first Test in Edgbaston last year, Kohli praised the No.3 batsman saying he worked harder since then and also set up an example for others on how to be patient.

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