"Color of my face would be completely different" - Rohit Sharma recalls hilarious incident involving his mother and veteran Indian batter

Team India ODI skipper Rohit Sharma hailed veteran batter Cheteshwar Pujara, recalling a hilarious incident from his early playing days. The 38-year-old opened up on how Pujara would be impossible to dislodge in red-ball cricket despite team meetings ahead of the match centered around dismissing the defiant batter.

Rohit also recalled his mother asking him about his face changing color after matches against Pujara's team, when the latter would put him through the grind.

Recalling those moments at Pujara's wife's book launch event, Rohit said (via NDTV):

"I still remember, team meetings only revolved around him (on) how to get him out, and if we don't get him out, probably we'd lose the game. All I remember is that when I used to go to the ground, when I was 14-years-old, and when I came back in the evening, the colour of my face would be completely different."

He continued:

"Because he used to bat all day and we used to field in the sun for (even) 2-3 days. I still remember that my mother asked me a couple of times that when you go to play from home, you look different and when you come home, after a week or 10 days, you look different. I would say, ‘mom, what do I do? There's a batsman by the name of Cheteshwar Pujara. He's been batting for three days'... so that is the first impression that we had of him."

Pujara is one of the most accomplished first-class batters, with an incredible 21,301 runs at an average of 51.82, including 66 centuries.

"We used to tease him about his running technique" - Rohit Sharma

Rohit Sharma lauded Cheteshwar Pujara for his incredible career despite dealing with an ACL injury to both his knees at the start of his career. The 37-year-old has been one of India's best Test batters, scoring 7,195 runs at an average of 43.60 in 103 outings.

Meanwhile, Rohit recently retired from Test cricket, scoring 4,301 runs in 67 matches.

"(It was) such a big injury (and) such a bad injury. Both his ACL were gone. For any cricketer, leave alone if you are not an athlete or not playing any sport, for a sportsman it's very, very tough if you lose both your ACL. We used to tease him about his running technique and all that but he managed to play more than 100 Test matches for India after that, a lot of credit goes to him for how he managed it," said Rohit.

Pujara was the Player of the Series in India's first-ever Test series win in Australia in 2018/19. However, he has been out of the Indian Test side since the 2023 World Test Championship (WTC) final against Australia at the Oval.