"Nathan Lyon Is Not That Good...": How Rohit Sharma Forced Cheteshwar Pujara To Abandon Natural Game
India ODI captain Rohit Sharma has revealed the inside story of yet another memorable moment from Indian cricket. Speaking at the launch of the book 'The Diary of a Cricketer's Wife', written by Cheteshwar Pujara 's wife Puja, Rohit spoke about the instance when his message from the dressing room urged Pujara to take on Australian spinner Nathan Lyon and smash him for a rare six. Despite slamming over 7,000 Test runs, Pujara isn't a well-known hitter, having a Test strike rate of under 45.
Rohit narrated the story of the event that took place in the third Test between India and Australia in Indore, in 2023.
Pujara and Axar Patel were out in the middle, scoring at a slow pace, with Nathan Lyon bowling the bulk of the overs. However, Rohit had spotted that Lyon had kept mid-on up and promptly sent an instruction to Pujara, via Ishan Kishan.
"We wanted to get Nathan Lyon off the track a little bit. We wanted to get some runs quickly. We probably were looking at declaring or something. We thought, 'no, something needs to change now, maybe, a message would do good'. The entire time, he was bowling with mid-on up. I thought, he's not that good of a bowler to keep mid-on up. I knew it was a challenge, the pitch was turning square but we needed to get runs quickly. So I had to send Ishan," Rohit narrated.
Rohit's instruction did the trick. Soon after, Pujara freed his arms and slogged Lyon for a six over that region.
Rohit, however, admitted that batters rarely pay heed to messages sent from the dressing room.
"It's one thing that we send messages. Sometimes what batters do is whenever someone comes out with a message, we know exactly why he's there. So I would stop him there itself!" Rohit said.
Despite Pujara top-scoring for India and being the only half-centurion from the team (59 runs off 142 balls), India went on to lose the match. Australia were set a mere target of 76, which was chased down with ease.
Both Rohit and Pujara are now out of the Indian Test team. Rohit announced his retirement from the longest format ahead of India's tour of England. On the other hand, Pujara has lost his place in the side, with his last appearance coming over two years ago, for the World Test Championship (WTC) 2023-25 final against Australia, which India lost.
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