Last Updated: June 01, 2023, 08:54 AM IST
Cheteshwar Pujara will be key to India’s chances of winning WTC. (AFP Photo)
The ICC World Test Championship final will be played from June 7 at The Oval
While his India teammates were tonking fours and sixes in IPL 2023, Cheteshwar Pujara was captaining Sussex in England, peeling of centuries while gearing up for the ICC World Test Championship final playing county cricket. With IPL over, the focus has swiftly shifted towards the world championship final that will see India take on Australia from June 7 in London’s Oval.
In eight matches of the ongoing County Championship, Pujara has accumulated 545 runs at 68.12 including three centuries and one fifty showing he’s been in rich vein of form. Naturally, he has been the only member of India’s WTC final squad that has played red-ball cricket in the past two months and thanks to that experience, his teammates will be relying on his inputs.
“The fact that he is been around will mean that he will have also seen how the pitch has been behaving at The Oval,” Gavaskar told Star Sports.
“He might not have played at The Oval, he might be in Sussex not too far away from London but he will have kept an eye on what is happening and his inputs will be invaluable as far as the batting unit is concerned or even as far as the captaincy is concerned,” he added.
Interestingly, Pujara had Steve Smith as Sussex teammate for a few matches of the season and Gavaskar feels the India middle-order batter could help his team work out a strategy to keep the Australian batting star quiet.
“…don’t forget he (Pujara) has also been captaining the team (Sussex), so he definitely will have worked out quite a few strategies seeing that Steve Smith, the Australian is his teammate at the moment,” Gavaskar said.
India will be playing in their second straight WTC final having qualified after finishing second in the standings. The contest is slated to get underway from June 7 at The Oval.
