Battling injury in Ranji Trophy, Pujara played a courageous inning of 91 runs, forced the selectors to think.

 

Indian batsman Cheteshwar Pujara has been consistently performing well with the bat for Saurashtra in the current Ranji Trophy season. He showed a glimpse of this against the services. Despite the injury, he played a half-century inning of 91 runs and played an important role in getting the match drawn. Pujara missed his century by nine runs, which would have been his 62nd century in first-class cricket. Despite performing brilliantly, he was ignored against England. 

Cheteshwar Pujara, who came to bat after retiring hurt due to a back injury, showed tremendous dedication throughout his innings. Pujara played some brilliant shots while at the crease against Services. Facing 133 balls, he played a brilliant inning of 91 runs with the help of 10 fours. During this innings, Pujara also became the second batsman from Saurashtra to score 7000 runs in Ranji Trophy. Before him, Sitanshu Kotak had crossed the figure of 7000. 

In the current edition of Ranji Trophy, Cheteshwar Pujara also completed 20000 runs in his first class career. With this he joined the list of great Indian batsmen like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Sunil Gavaskar. Pujara also scored the 17th double century of his first-class career against Jharkhand earlier this month. Cheteshwar Pujara is currently the second highest run scorer in the tournament with 535 runs in 6 innings. 

Cheteshwar Pujara is out of the Indian cricket team after the 2023 World Test Championship final against Australia. India had to face defeat in the final and after that Pujara was shown the way out of the team. Pujara is counted among India's best Test batsmen. 

If we talk about Services vs Saurashtra match, this match is a draw. In this match, Services batted first and declared their innings by losing 7 wickets in 191 overs and scoring a huge score of 536 runs. Whereas the entire Saurashtra team was all out on the score of 462 in the first innings in 139.5 overs.