Did You Know Pujara Has Bowled To Steve Smith? 5 Surprising Facts About His Career

It’s the end of an era as Cheteshwar Pujara has called it quits from all forms of cricket in India. One of Indian cricket’s greatest ever servants, Pujara ends his India career with 7,195 runs and 19 centuries, and close to 30,000 runs in professional cricket overall. 

Now, it’s no secret that Pujara was a run-machine and an immovable wall, and the grit and fight he brought to the field, along with his batting, has been well-documented. However, aside from the obvious stats and records, there are also lots of surprising facts about Pujara. 

How many of them are you aware of?

Pujara has bowled to Steve Smith & AB de Villiers in Tests

That’s right. Of the 12 balls Pujara has bowled in Test cricket, 10 of them have come against Steve Smith and AB de Villiers. In fact, across these 10 balls, only 1 run was scored, that was by de Villiers. 

Pujara has actually taken 6 wickets in first-class cricket. The first of those wickets? The wicket of Mark Orchard of New Zealand A, representing India A, back in 2006.

Pujara is low-key a boundary machine in Tests

Words you would never generally associate with Pujara, right? But yes. In his Test career, Pujara hit a whopping 863 boundaries. For reference, that’s more than the likes of Jonny Bairstow (775), Faf du Plessis (537) and Ajinkya Rahane (578). In fact, since 2010, Virat Kohli is the only Indian batter to have hit more Test boundaries than Pujara. 

Pujara has made more IPL appearances than a lot of T20 veterans

We associate Pujara with Test cricket and rightly so, but he was once a semi-regular in the IPL. Pujara has made 30 IPL appearances, which is more than the likes of Jason Roy (21), Darren Sammy (22), Martin Guptill (13), Mohammad Nabi (24), Romario Shepherd (18), Glenn Phillips (8) and others. 

He has a T20 century to his name 

What does Cheteshwar Pujara the T20 batter have that the likes of MS Dhoni, Dinesh Karthik, Hardik Pandya and Yuvraj Singh don’t? A T20 century.

That’s right, in a Syed Mushtaq Ali clash against Railways in 2019, Pujara, opening the batting, smashed 100* off 61 balls. In fact, in that SMAT season, Pujara’s scores read 100*, 68, 42*, 39*, 1 & 10. 

Pujara has played ODI cricket for India

This is something many seem to have forgotten entirely. Between 2013 & 2014, Pujara played 5 ODIs for India, all coming against either Zimbabwe or Bangladesh. However, he was not able to shine, averaging 10.20 in those games while striking at a mere 39.23. 

But five ODIs is not a bad figure. That, for instance, is surprisingly more than Shivam Dube, who has only played four ODIs for India.