Cheteshwar Pujara is back among the runs and attributes his recent success to the technical advice received from India A coach Rahul Dravid.
Pujara, who was dropped from the playing XI during the Australia tour, has made a grand comeback having scored a century (145) against Sri Lanka and a gritty 77 against South Africa both on tricky pitches.
While he didn’t want to divulge the secret of his success, he did reveal that Dravid had told him about a employing a shorter stance (decreasing the distance between the feet).
“I have the measurement of what kind of stance I had and the distance between the feet. Now I have a slightly shorter stance and the distance is slightly less (between the two feet). I discussed it with my father (former first class player Arvind Pujara) and Rahul Bhai before the Sri Lanka series and came down to the conclusion as to what I wanted to do,” Pujara told mediapersons here today,
But the right-hander also said that a stance is an individual thing and one should be comfortable while employing a certain technique.
“Every stance has its advantages and disadvantages. Of players’ comfort and kind of technique they have. So each individual is different. Ultimately, most important thing about stance is the comfort.”
For the 27-year-old Rajkot cricketer, the key to success is self-belief as poor form is just a passing phase.
“I never thought that I will not be able to return to international cricket (when dropped from XI). Because, I had a good start and I scored a lot of runs in domestic cricket. So I always had that confidence. There was a time where I did not score runs as expected but that phase is gone and now I am back in form.
“If you look at all cricketers, they go through a certain phase where they don’t do as well as they are expected to but once you start believing yourself and working hard on your game, scoring runs in any game domestic or club game, then you get confidence,” said the Saurashtra batsman.
Apart from Murali Vijay, it was Pujara, whose footwork looked assured against South African spinners on a turning deck and he attributes it to the runs he has scored against tweakers on domestic circuit.
“For me, it has been a good experience having played a lot of domestic cricket and scoring big runs on turning wickets. It has helped me know the wickets and I know my gameplan as to how I can tackle the spin bowling.