Cheteshwar Pujara Biography: Age, Wife, Stats(Test, T20, ODI), Early Life, Career Journey, Records & Retirement

Cheteshwar Pujara was born on 25 January 1988 in Rajkot, Gujarat, into a cricket-obsessed family. His grandfather, Shivlal Pujara, was a leg-spinner who played for the princely state of Dhrangadhra, while his father, Arvind Pujara, and uncle Bipin Pujara both played Ranji Trophy cricket for Saurashtra. Arvind worked as a clerk with Indian Railways and, lacking the money for formal coaching, personally bowled to his son every day, before and after work, on the railway ground near their modest quarters in Rajkot. He began coaching Cheteshwar from as young as age five, initially with a rubber ball against a tree before progressing to proper nets.

Pujara’s mother, Reena, supported the household and was deeply involved in shaping his discipline and daily routine, including early bedtimes to ensure he was rested for training. Tragedy struck in 2005, when Pujara was just 17, his mother passed away after a battle with cancer. By his father’s own account, the teenage Pujara internalized the grief quietly rather than breaking down publicly, a trait that would come to define the unshakeable calm he later showed at the crease under fast-bowling barrages. His father has credited Reena’s emphasis on faith, patience, and quiet resolve for much of Pujara’s famous mental fortitude.

Pujara first played with a leather ball at age 13 and made his India Under-19 Test debut in 2005 against England, scoring 211 while opening the innings. He later starred at the 2006 Under-19 World Cup, finishing as the tournament’s leading run-scorer with 349 runs at an average of 116.33, and was named Player of the Series even though India lost the final to Pakistan. He also completed a BBA from J.J. Kundalia College in Rajkot alongside his cricket.

Coaching Journey and Domestic Rise

• Pujara’s father, Arvind, remained his sole personal coach throughout his career, described by Pujara as “meticulous, disciplined, and strict,” a taskmaster who would repeat technical corrections until they were perfected.
• He made his first-class debut for Saurashtra in the 2005–06 season and quickly established himself as a run-machine in domestic cricket, playing for Saurashtra continuously from 2005 to 2025.
• In the 2012–13 Ranji Trophy season, Pujara scored 2,043 first-class runs at an average of 102.15, underlining his appetite for long, match-defining innings.
• He is credited with 12 double centuries in first-class cricket, the most by any Indian batter, a record he set by breaking the long-standing mark held by Vijay Merchant.
• He also played county cricket for Derbyshire (2014), Yorkshire (2015, 2018), Nottinghamshire (2017), and Sussex (2022–2024), with his prolific 2022 stint at Sussex (five centuries, including a double hundred) directly earning him a recall to the Indian Test side after being dropped.
•  

International Career Journey

Test Debut and Early Promise (2010)

Pujara made his Test debut on 9 October 2010 against Australia in Bengaluru, stepping into a batting line-up that still featured Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, and VVS Laxman. He had to wait patiently for his opportunity behind these legends despite consistently strong domestic form, but once in, he never looked like a stopgap, he became India’s long-term successor to Dravid at No. 3.

Limited-Overs Career

Unlike most modern top-order batters, Pujara barely featured in white-ball cricket. He played just 5 ODIs (2013–2014), scoring 51 runs, and never played a T20I for India, a rare career profile in the modern game, cementing his identity purely as a Test-match craftsman.

The Peak Years: 2018–2019 Border-Gavaskar Trophy

Pujara’s defining series came on India’s historic 2018–19 tour of Australia, India’s first-ever Test series win on Australian soil. He scored 521 runs in four Tests at an average of 74.42, including three centuries, 123 in Adelaide, 106 in Melbourne, and 193 in Sydney, and was named Player of the Series.

The Gabba 2021 and Body Blows

In the famous 2020–21 series in Australia, Pujara scored 271 runs across four Tests (average 33.87), including a gritty 56 off 211 balls at the Gabba while absorbing repeated blows to his body from the Australian pace attack, an innings widely remembered as symbolic of his career: unglamorous, painful, and match-winning. India won that series and the Border-Gavaskar Trophy for a second successive time.

Decline, Drop, and Comeback via County Cricket

By 2022, a prolonged lean patch saw Pujara dropped from the Indian Test team. Rather than fade away, he went to England and torched county attacks for Sussex, scoring five centuries (including a double) in the 2022 County Championship. That form forced a recall for the rescheduled Edgbaston Test against England in July 2022, where he made a composed 66 in the second innings.

Final Chapter: The 2023 WTC Final

Pujara played seven more Tests after his recall, but the 2023 World Test Championship Final against Australia at The Oval (June 2023) turned out to be his last international appearance, as India began transitioning to a younger batting core.

Retirement (2025)

On 24 August 2025, Pujara announced his retirement from all forms of Indian cricket via a post on X (formerly Twitter), thanking the BCCI and the Saurashtra Cricket Association. He signed off with 103 Tests, 7,195 runs at an average of 43.60, 19 centuries, and 35 half-centuries, numbers that fit naturally into the larger record conversation around the most centuries in Test cricket, with a highest score of 206 not out.Tributes poured in from Sachin Tendulkar, VVS Laxman, Yuvraj Singh, Gautam Gambhir, and Virender Sehwag, among others. His final competitive innings came in the 2024–25 Ranji Trophy for Saurashtra, where he scored 402 runs in 10 innings at 40.20, including a century.

Post-Retirement: Commentary Career

Since stepping away from playing, Pujara has moved into broadcasting, joining the BBC’s Test Match Special team as a colour commentator/analyst during the England vs India Test series at Headingley in June 2025 — bringing his match-reading skills to a new audience.

Career Highs

Career Lows

• Dropped after WTC Final struggles (2022): A prolonged loss of form saw Pujara left out of the Indian Test setup in early 2022, prompting real questions over whether his international career was over.
• Extremely limited white-ball career: He never cemented a white-ball spot, playing only 5 ODIs and no T20Is, which kept him out of India’s limited-overs plans entirely, including all major white-ball World Cups.
• Final axing after the 2023 WTC Final: Despite scoring over 400 runs across his final seven-Test comeback stretch, he was dropped again after the WTC Final loss to Australia and never recalled, effectively ending his India career two years before his formal retirement announcement.
• Personal tragedy young: Losing his mother to cancer at just 17 was a defining early hardship that shaped, but also burdened, his formative years as a cricketer.
• Family health scares during his best cricket: His father and coach Arvind was hospitalized with heart complications during India’s 2018–19 Australia tour, the very series in which Pujara was playing some of the best cricket of his life, and later underwent open-heart surgery in 2019.

IPL Career

Career IPL totals: 30 matches, 390 runs, average 20.52, highest score 51, bought by CSK for ₹50 lakh in the IPL 2021 auction. Pujara’s IPL numbers were always modest — a natural consequence of a technique and temperament built for defending the new ball over sessions, not scoring at speed across four overs of powerplay.

Personal Life