JOIN USRahul Dravid says Cheteshwar Pujara, who succeeded the former India captain at the crucial number three position in the Test side, has it in him to be a successful player in ODIs as well.
Seen by many as one who could go on to be an able successor to Dravid, Pujara has an average of 65 after 13 Tests, having scored four hundreds and three half-centuries, and Dravid believed the Saurashtra batsman “approaches” Test cricket the way he did.
“He’s had a great start to his international career, in fact a much better start than I had. I think he has been brought up in the old school of batsmanship. He is developing more shots and he approaches Test cricket in the same way as I did,” Dravid said. The 40-year-old was speaking at ‘A Day with Dravid’, an ESPNcricinfo event in which nine cricket fans from across the world got the chance to interact with him.
Pujara hasn’t made his ODI debut yet, but in 61 domestic one-day matches Pujara averages 56.97, with eight hundreds and 17 fifties. “He’s got good basics in place. You can see that he is constantly improving and he is someone who will find answers to questions. He is going to have his ups and downs and face a lot of challenges adapting to different forms of the game and conditions.
“With his attitude and the way he is going about playing his cricket, I think he will find answers to a lot of these questions and one of them will be one-day cricket.” Dravid felt that for Test cricket to survive, it needed better scheduling, with more matches for all teams. “One thing I’d like to see definitely is scheduling to be a lot better.”