With Cheteshwar Pujara’s retirement, have we seen the last of the Test specialists?

Mumbai: 66 million years. That’s how long ago one will have to go back to trace the extinction of dinosaurs.With Cheteshwar Pujara’s retirement on Sunday, the last Test-only player has become extinct. After all, we live in times where Test selections too are influenced by IPL performances.Pujara’s twin dismissals in his last Test, the 2023 WTC final, against Australia, were ironic. In the first innings, he got out bowled doing something he had done for a living. Leaving the ball. In the second, he was out playing an uncharacteristic ramp off Pat Cummins.Between those two shots though, was a career built on just keeping the good balls out, grinding down attacks and scoring off the bad deliveries. An anomaly in an age of intent merchants and strike-rates.That drill was cultivated at the Railways ground in Rajkot, where his father Arvind often censured him for playing an aerial stroke. He even stopped his son from playing soft-ball cricket as he feared that his game would get polluted and would jeopardise their joint dream of wearing India’s Test cap No. 266 in Bengaluru, in Oct 2010, against of course, Australia.Curiously, he batted at No. 5 in the first innings to replace an injured VVS Laxman and No. 3 in the second to replace a demoted Rahul Dravid.Talk about passing the baton.For the Pujara’s, playing for India only meant playing Tests. Mind you, the cash-rich IPL was already three seasons old.How many father-son duos exist today who walk up to coaches and tell them: ‘Make him bat like Pujara’?Former India skipper and chief selector Dilip Vengsarkar, who also runs an academy in Mumbai and organises several tournaments, acknowledges that players like Pujara are a rarity in today’s times. But he also feels that the decision to play only Tests was not his alone.“Players like Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane wanted to play T20 too. No body wants to play only in one format. It puts too much pressure on the player as you have to perform in every match,” Vengsarkar told TOI.“Rahane has a couple of IPL hundreds. Many feel that he was a Test specialist. Had Pujara been given chances in T20s, he too would have found a way to succeed,” he adds.Vengsarkar’s point about the pressure of playing only in one format is well taken. Pujara must have felt it. After his 193 in the 2019 Sydney Test during the 2018-2019 Border Gavaskar Trophy, he played 62 innings in 35 Tests and in 21 of them, failed to reach double figures. In them were six ducks. His average in those 35 Tests was 29.98.The riches that T20 cricket promise today may have doused the ambitions of the modern player to take body blows like Pujara and tire out bowling attacks. He would rather throw bowlers off by playing laps and scoops.A former India batter, who runs an academy in Mumbai says, “The first thing we were taught was forward defence and back foot defence. Only after we had mastered them, we worked on attacking shots. Today, 10 and 12-year-olds play the scoop in the first 10 balls during their net session. And often it is the parents who ask us, ‘when will my kid learn to play reverse sweep or switch hit’”For Vengsarkar though there cannot be a compromise on basics.“In our academy, no child below 15 is allowed to play scoops, reverse scoops or ramps. The margin of error is small while playing them. The player won’t graduate to higher grades playing only fancy strokes.”The 116-Test veteran also has some advice for pushy parents.“Money has become important. Parents guide players and find coaches to teach kids fancy shots or take them to clubs, or make them switch clubs that encourage attacking play. I have seen parents making their children jump from one club to another. But if parents are mature enough, they would realise that unless you have a solid foundation, you won’t be able to adapt to different formats.”What about selections to the Test team though? On one hand we have an Abhimanyu Easwaran, who has a FC average of close to 50 but has seen 16 players leapfrog him for a Test debut. And on the other, players get in the Test team after one good IPL season?Why? Rahane himself earned a Test recall for the WTC final based on his impressive show for CSK in the 2023 IPL.Vengsarkar, one of India’s most celebrated chief selectors, is unhesitant in calling it out. “It is unfair to pick a player for Tests on the basis of IPL performances especially if it happens at the expense of someone who has performed consistently in domestic cricket. Selectors must judge if a player can handle short pitched deliveries or can bat on a seaming track when there are four slips and a gully waiting. Do we see that in the IPL?”He feels if more players like Pujara have to be unearthed, selectors must make playing in the Duleep Trophy and Irani Cup mandatory.“Pick your red ball team based on what those players do in these tournaments. All matches must take place in the south in Sept as it does not rain there in Sept. If an IPL performer also handles spinners, fast bowlers, different situations well, defends solidly and plays out a spell if a bowler is on top, pick him. A good long format player can always adapt to the shorter format.”Today’s swipe generation may remember a lap of Mumbai Indians’ Suryakumar Yadav that goes outside the stadium for six months. What will stay in their memory bank though is Pujara’s 211-ball 56 at the Gabba that made lockdown days more cheerful for Indians. It made even CSK shell out Rs. 50 lakh to bag him at the 2021 IPL mini-auction. When asked why did the franchise pick someone who last played in the IPL in 2014, CSK CEO Kasi Viswanathan said, “It was out of respect for his contribution for India.”That says everything.