Cheteshwar Pujara retires as India’s last great Test match guardian

Cheteshwar Pujara’s cricketing journey — one that began on a nippy December morning in Rajkot in 2005 and stretched into the crisp air of a February Ranji fixture in 2025 — has drawn to a close.

Over two decades, he built not just a career but a citadel of runs, patience, and perseverance that defined India’s red-ball cricket through its most transformative years.

Dodgy knees and repeated ACL reconstructions could not bend his iron will. In 278 First-Class matches, he piled up 21,301 runs at 51.06, with 66 centuries and 18 doubles — the fourth-most in history. At the crease, he endured 41,715 deliveries, more than almost any Indian of his generation. He was, in every sense, the true heir to Rahul Dravid’s No. 3 legacy.

Between 2010 and 2023, Pujara’s name was stitched into India’s Test fabric. He played 103 matches, facing more than 16% of the team’s deliveries and directly contributing 14% of its runs. Yet his real value lay beyond numbers: nearly 30% of India’s runs were scored while he stood guard at the other end. His partners flourished because he consumed the storm.

His batting, deliberate and unhurried, was a lesson in time itself. On average, he occupied the crease for 124 minutes per innings, behind only Dravid and Tendulkar among India’s modern greats. His 19 Test hundreds were not just landmarks but monuments — averaging 144 runs each, exhausting bowlers and tilting series in India’s favour.

The pinnacle came in January 2019, with his 193 in Sydney, the cornerstone of India’s historic Border-Gavaskar Trophy triumph in Australia. In those years, he was spoken of in the same breath as Kohli, Williamson, and Smith, his average of 52.66 placing him among the world’s elite.

But cricket, like time, is unforgiving. From 2019 onward, his form waned. Once invincible against spin, he began to falter against it. His average fell to under 30 during the World Test Championship era, a harsh decline for a man who once embodied the long-format ethos.

Still, Pujara remained undeterrable at home and in county cricket. In his final two seasons alone, he struck 10 First-Class hundreds, proving his appetite for runs had not diminished even as international doors closed.

Pujara departs leaving behind a legacy not of flamboyance, but of fortitude. He was India’s still point in a turning world, the batsman who measured his worth in hours rather than boundaries. He stood firm long enough for others to shine, and in that, he was as much a match-winner as the stroke-makers around him.

When the story of Indian Test cricket in the 21st century is told, Cheteshwar Pujara will be remembered as its sentinel — a man who made time itself his ally, and in doing so, secured victory brick by brick.