Cheteshwar Pujara has admitted that not getting a bid by any of the teams in the IPL mega auction earlier this year proved to be a blessing in disguise for him because if he had got a bid and was picked by one of the teams, the chances were very less that he would have got a game to play.
According to Cheteshwar Pujara, who was in an exclusive conversation with the Indian Express, he would have had to warm the bench all season if he was picked by one of the IPL teams, so now that he has the advantage of the hindsight, he can say that it was good in a sense that he didn’t get any bids.
Since Pujara went unsold in the IPL mega auction, he accepted the offer from the English county Sussex and played some county championship games in England at the start of the English summer.
The veteran Indian top-order batsman scored so heavily in those county games that he ended up earning himself a recall to the Indian test team for the one-off test match against England.
Cheteshwar Pujara was recently dropped from the Indian test team
Cheteshwar Pujara, along with Ajinkya Rahane, was recently dropped from the Indian test team for the 2-match test series against Sri Lanka, and the way their replacements Hanuma Vihari and Shreyas Iyer batted after that, it seemed it would be a long wait for the two veterans to make a comeback to the test team.
But, Pujara’s county stint and the number of runs he scored there made sure that he didn’t have to wait long for a Test recall, and although Vihari and Iyer are still in the test team, Pujara might find himself in India’s playing XI for that one-off test match against England, given his experience and recent familiarity to the English conditions.
