Published: Sep 02, 2025, 01:06 AM (IST)
Edited: Sep 02, 2025, 01:06 AM (IST)
The former Indian cricketer Robin Uthappa shared his thoughts on the retirement of the star test player Cheteshwar Pujara. Uthappa stated that Pujara should have retired earlier because he stayed in cricket for too long.
Cheteshwar Pujara, known as one of India’s best Test players, announced his retirement from all formats after he was not selected for the England Test series and was also left out of the Duleep Trophy squads.
Robin Uthappa felt that Pujara’s retirement should have happened earlier. He said it was clear that selectors were moving on from Pujara after the Border-Gavaskar Trophy in early 2023.
“I think he overextended his stay a little bit. I think it was communicated to him that he will not be considered anymore and this England tour was the final straw. It seemed very bleak for Indian cricket to go back to him, Rahane, at the start of a new cycle. I reckoned when he didn’t get picked in that Australia tour, he could have called it time. But obviously, it is very hard,” Uthappa was quoted as saying on his YouTube channel.
“I remember it was a first-class game in 2009-10, it was Karnataka versus Saurashtra and he got a triple hundred. He was batting 200-odd end of day’s play. I went early in the morning to have a hit. This guy comes and rocks up at 7:30 in the morning after having scored a double hundred and batted the same amount of time that I batted before going into bat for the game. For him as a personality, he was obsessed with batting and being not out,” he recalled.
Cheteshwar Pujara retired with 7,195 runs in 103 Test matches, scoring at an average of 43.60. He made 18 centuries and 35 fifties, which makes him India’s 8th highest run-scorer in Tests. In first-class cricket overall, he scored 21,301 runs.
