'Cheteshwar Pujara Deserves to be Treated Properly': Former India Women's Head Coach Slams Selectors

The omission of Cheteshwar Pujara from India’s Test squad has not gone down well with the former cricketers. After an underwhelming show with the bat against Australia in World Test Championship Final, Pujara was dropped from Test squad for the West Indies tour.

Despite enjoying good runs with Sussex in County cricket ahead of the WTC Final, Pujara failed to make it big in the all-important clash and scored low scores in both innings 14 and 27.

Former India women’s team head coach WV Raman joined the bandwagon of former stars who lashed out at the selection committee for dropping Pujara from the Test squad.

Raman pointed out that India have picked four opening batters in the Test squad while dropping number 3 Pujara who played a crucial role in helping India win matches both at home and in overseas conditions.

“The problem is that they have picked four possible openers, and they have dropped Pujara, which is another bone of contention. A cricketer like Pujara has done a lot for Indian cricket, and he has been instrumental for India winning both at home and abroad on quite a few occasions,” Raman told former India opener Aakash Chopra on the latter’s YouTube channel.

Raman pointed out that Pujara was the vice-captain of the Test team a few months back but was left in the cold after a failure in WTC Final.

“He is a gritty customer. He was even elevated to vice-captaincy quite recently but a failure in the WTC final, he finds that he is left out in the cold. I think this is one decision that has not gone down well with many people, and I, personally, as well, I am not for it,” he added.

Pujara has played 103 Test matches for India and scored 7195 runs at an average of 43.61. He was crucial for India’s back-to-back Test series win over Australia Down Under.

The former India opener said that Pujara could have been given a better exit if it was the end of road for him in the Indian team.

“He deserves to be treated properly. In the event, if they think it’s the end of Pujara, he could have been given a better exit, but that’s how things happen sometimes, and this is not the first case again. There are a lot of precedences as far as this kind of treatment is concerned.”

While he further suggested that the selectors could have made it clear who is going to bat at the number 3 spot in the West Indies Tests.

“The presumption is that out of the four openers, they would probably utilise one at No. 3. Whether it’s Gill or Ruturaj Gaikwad remains to be seen. That is once again not explicitly stated, and that again creates a little bit of a grey area for people who are keen to know things,” he added.