Cheteshwar Pujara slammed his 17th Test hundred on Day two of the ongoing third Test between India and Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) on Thursday.
En route to his hundred in the Boxing Day Test, Pujara swept away quite a few records and one of the significant records was that he became just the fifth Indian to score a ton in a Boxing Day Test at the iconic MCG after Sachin Tendulkar (116 in 1999-2000 series), Virender Sehwag (195 in 2003-04 series), Virat Kohli (169 in 2014-15 series) and Ajinkya Rahane (147 in 2014-15 series).
Pujara took his own sweet time, like always to settle well at the crease. He was quick on his feet while taking on Aussie spinner Nathan Lyon, judged his length perfectly to either defend or drive on either side of the wicket.
Pujara took 280 balls to reach the three-digit figure and that turned out to be the slowest of all his 17 Test hundreds.
His gritty knock of 106 off 319 balls was brought to an end by Australia's best bowler of the match, so far, Pat Cummins who bowled a vicious low bouncer. Pujara had no answer to that as he tried to defend it, the ball went past his bat and rattled the stumps.
As Pujara walked off the MCG field, he walked with another record to his name. These numbers would certainly frustrate the bowlers who have bowled to him in the last two years.
Since January 2017, Pujara has been the only batsman to have faced over 4000 balls in Test cricket. He has so far faced 4633 balls in 40 innings, that is facing an average of 116 balls per innings. The next best batsman has been another Indian, Kohli, who has played 3796 balls in 39 innings and he had faced an average of 97 balls per innings.
At stumps of Day two on Thursday, Australia were 8 for no loss and trailed India by 435 runs. Earlier, Indians declared their first innings at 443 for 7 in 169.4 overs. Rohit Sharma remained unbeaten on 63.
