England’s County Championship gained the sub-continent cricket fans’ interests with India’s Test specialist Cheteshwar Pujara teaming up with Pakistan opener Mohammad Rizwan for Sussex.
The duo had a successful outing and shared a 154-run stand as well during their stint. Pujara glowed brighter with four consecutive centuries, including two double hundred, in the championship.
Rizwan, who made his County debut this season, said it wasn’t “strange at all” to share a dressing room with the 34-year-old India batter, whose ability to focus left the Pakistan cricketer in awe.
“Believe me, I haven’t felt strange at all about it (playing alongside Pujara),” Rizwan was quoted as saying by cricwick.net. “I even joke around with him and also tease him a lot. He is a very nice person and his concentration and focus are unreal. If you can learn something from someone else, you must take that opportunity.”
Indeed, the 29-year-old wicketkeeper-batter made the most out of the time he spent with Pujara at the nets and picked on his brains to understand how to go about batting in English conditions as he believed the Indian’s concentration abilities are next only to Pak batting great Younis Khan.
“In my life, the player with the highest levels of concentration and focus I have seen is Younis bhai. So No. 1 is Younis bhai. After that, it was Fawad Alam but now Pujara is No. 2 and Fawad Alam No. 3,” said Rizwan.
“I try to find out what makes these three guys so good in terms of their focus and concentration. I keep talking to Younis bhai about this. With Fawad, I haven’t talked a lot about this.”
Pujara, on the other hand, gave valuable batting lessons on how not forcing a drive away from the body will help a batter sustain in England.
“With Pujara, I had a chat when I had just come to England and got out a couple of times. He told me a few things that you should play close to your body. Now it is no secret that we play a lot of white-ball cricket and there we play well away from the body because the white-ball doesn’t swing or seam much and you are always looking for runs.
“So here, I got out chasing a couple of wide deliveries early on. Then I sought him out at the nets and he said, ‘in Pakistan or in Asia, we are accustomed to forcing our drives. You cannot force your drives over here. Secondly, you have to play closer to your body.'”
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