Cheteshwar Pujara Learned How To Adjust To T20 Cricket By Taking Advice From Rahul Dravid

IPL 2021: 7 years after making a come back to IPL 2021, Pujara got a piece of advice from former Indian Captain Rahul Dravid.

In the longest format of cricket that is the Test Series, he developed a fanbase for the image of a Test Specialist batsman but was never considered a great batsman for the Shorter and Limited Over’s Format of the games. But in this IPL 2021, Pujara has changed his appearance to a T20 format, that he has been traded by Chennai Super Kings in the new edition of IPL 2021.

While being interviewed by ESPN Cricinfo, Pujara did not want to spoil his Test Cricket Style, just because he was trying very hard to change that for the T20 style batting, but with the help of the king of Test Rahul Dravid’s advice which made him change his perception of the game.

Pujara said that he stops thinking about whether his Test cricket will get spoiled if he plays the way how he was told by his mentor cum Test Cricketer, great Rahul Dravid. He said that he was afraid of the technical errors he would be making after the IPL gets over.

The Advice Rahul Dravid gave him a long time ago was, "It all comes with Experience, even after playing different shots, your natural game and the shot will never change, so you just need to change your thinking mentally and physically so that you can play whatever format of cricket you are picked for."

"The first time I started playing cricket was at a very young age. I was around 15 years old at that time, where I made my first-class debut in the year 2005-2006. So, even if I played T20 cricket while I was training for Test cricket, I would never forget my test cricket with my T20 cricket and would not mix it up", he further elaborated.

The last time Pujara played an IPL game, was in 2014 for Kings XI Punjab, which is now called Punjab Kings. Before that, he played for many teams like Kolkata Knight Riders and Royal Challengers Bangalore as well, where he played 30 IPL games and made a total score of 390 runs for a strike rate of 99.74.

Pujara also stated that he is not a power hitter but after seeing players like Virat Kholi, Rohit Sharma, and Shikhar Dhawan, he too started to practice and play shots like them, to change his thinking from Test Cricket to T20 Cricket. 

"So now playing T20 Cricket is not going to be a big deal for me no more and no more worries about spoiling my Test Cricket Format, cause of playing T20 Cricket", he further added.