Pujara aims to make a century every time

NEW DELHI: India batsman Cheteshwar Pujara said that he aims to make a century every time he walks out to bat and acknowledged that his recent international season wasn’t upto the high standards he sets for himself.

In the recent series in New Zealand, Pujara scored 100 runs across four innings as India conceded the Test series 2-0. It was an extension of a relatively lean run for the classically styled batsman, starting from India’s tour of West Indies in 2019. In nine Tests since that series, he has failed to score a century.

This patch can be viewed as a statistical blip in the career of a batsman who has 18 Test hundreds and averages 48.66 in the format. Pujara admitted that his recent performances haven’t been quite up to his standard, which is defined by him challenging himself to make a hundred every time he bats.

“I always challenge myself to score a 100 but to average close to 50 in Tests means you are scoring a half-century almost every second innings,” Pujara said in an interview with PTI. “My standards are always high and I am not satisfied with the season that I had but I would not call it a bad one at all,” he said.

Despite the recent dearth of hundreds, Pujara has been India’s second-highest Test run-scorer over the last couple of years, behind only Virat Kohli. It isn’t his ability to make big runs that have come under scrutiny, rather it’s his scoring-rate that comes under the scanner every now and again.