Sussex captain Cheteshwar Pujara continues his blistering form ahead of WTC final; smashes another century in County Championship

Sussex captain Cheteshwar Pujara smashed another century in the County Championship Division Two, this time against Worcestershire on Day 2 of the ongoing contest on Friday, May 5. The right-handed batter smashed his third century in only his fourth game of the season.

At the time of writing, Pujara was batting on 129 off 166 balls, including 19 boundaries and a six. His exploits with the bat helped Sussex take a lead over Worcestershire.

The 35-year-old recently smashed 151 and 115 against Gloucestershire and Durham, respectively.

For the uninitiated, Cheteshwar Pujara has been brilliant with bat in England since last year. He amassed 1094 runs in only eight games at an average of 109.4, including five centuries last season. The Saurashtra batter followed that with 624 runs in nine innings at the Royal London One-Day Cup, featuring three centuries.

It’s worth mentioning that Pujara also enjoys a decent record in international cricket in England, scoring 829 runs in 15 Tests, including a century and five fifties.

Pujara, though, failed to deliver in the Border-Gavaskar Trophy at home, scoring 140 runs, including a solitary half-century.

He, however, enjoys a brilliant record against their World Test Championship (WTC) final opponenets away from home. He has scored 993 runs in 11 Tests at an average of 47.29. England is likely to provide similar conditions similar to Australia.

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Cheteshwar Pujara’s form is a good sign for Team India ahead of the WTC final

Cheteshwar Pujara’s sublime form with the bat comes as a major relief to Team India amid injury woes ahead of the ICC World Test Championship (WTC) final, scheduled to be played at the Oval in London, starting on June 7.

KL Rahul is the latest batter to be ruled out of the ICC’s marquee event. Shreyas Iyer has been already ruled out due to injury, with Ajinkya Rahane replacing him in the squad.

Cheteshwar Pujara will now look to continue his purple patch with the bat for Team India, which lost the last WTC final by eight wickets against New Zealand under Virat Kohli’s captaincy.

India’s Test squad WTC final: Rohit Sharma (Captain), Shubman Gill, Cheteshwar Pujara, Virat Kohli, Ajinkya Rahane, KL Rahul (ruled out), KS Bharat (wk), Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Axar Patel, Shardul Thakur, Mohammed Shami, Mohammed Siraj, Umesh Yadav, and Jaydev Unadkat.

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