Cheteshwar Pujara Retirement: Cheteshwar Pujara played his debut international match against Australia way back in 2010, where he took over the reins of the No.3 position from Rahul Dravid. Dravid was a part of the Indian team at that time as well, but everyone was aware that after Dravid retired from the longest format, Pujara would be replacing him and would try to create an image of himself. It would have been quite challenging for someone like Pujara, who had just started playing for India in international cricket. And then eventually, when Pujara became comfortable in this position, he became Dravid's successor and gave the opponent bowlers a hard time just like Dravid.

Since Pujara has announced his retirement from all forms of cricket, he would now be looking back at all his achievements and the way he had served the Indian cricket team over the last 10 years. During his illustrious career, he had played for India in 103 Test matches and had scored 7195 runs at a staggering average of 43.60.

He had scored his first century way back in 2012 against New Zealand as he had scored 159 runs in Hyderabad. And he scored his last century in this format against Bangladesh way back in 2022 in Chattogram.

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He had also represented the country in five ODIs, but then he made Test cricket his priority and played a huge role in the Indian Test team under Virat Kohli's captaincy, who dominated in this format between 2016 and 2020. He played a huge role in helping the Men in Blue win the 2018-2019 Border-Gavaskar Trophy series against Australia.

Australia brings out the best in Pujara

It should be noted here that while playing in the longest format in Australia, Pujara was always seen at his absolute best. During the 2018-19 Test series against Australia, he had scored three hundreds and had played more than 1200 balls during the four-match Test series.

He gave the pace trio of Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, and Josh Hazlewood a hard time and also took spinner Nathan Lyon to the cleaners.

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If the 2018-19 Test series was about grit and determination, then the 2020-21 series was about courage. When a lot of senior Indian players were ruled out owing to injuries, Pujara played an important part. During the Brisbane Test, he had played more than 200 balls and also got lots of blows on the body, but kept batting for long hours. His determination played a huge role in helping the visitors script history at the Gabba.

On the fifth day of the last Test match, he had received 11 blows on his body. He had scored a match-winning knock of 56 runs off 211 balls.

A country that has produced lots of star batters, Pujara has become the eighth most successful run-scorer till now. He had achieved one milestone that none of the other seven Indian batters had achieved.

During the 2018 Test series against Australia, he alone gave the Australian bowlers a run for their money in their backyard. He had scored 521 runs in that series and was also adjudged the Man of the Series award.