|| India Correspondent ||
India's one of the batting mainstays in the longer format, Cheteshwar Pujara, still aspires to play in the One Day International format as well. He last played for India in an ODI was on August 1, 2013, and he has played only five ODIs so far.
"I still have aspirations to play white-ball cricket for Team India, there's no doubt about that," Pujara said to Boria Majumdar on Sports Today's Youtube Channel.
He further shared that being absent from India's limited-overs squad and Indian Premier League left him in a struggle to get proper match practice as well prior to the recently-concluded Australia series. "Yes, at the same time it becomes difficult when other guys are getting some match practice," he said while referring to others' appearance in IPL 2020 in the UAE.
"After the lockdown, I didn't have any match practise before the Australia tour so to prepare for that big series it became a little difficult. Otherwise, if there was no COVID then there would have been some first-class games which I would have played. But because of the COVID lockdown, there were not many FC games which I could play. I only played 1 game (warm-up match) before the Test series started so as a batter it was difficult to gain the rhythm, concentration. Early on it was difficult but as I started playing few more games, it took me a couple of Test matches to find the right way (to bat in Australia)," he further added.
However, the experienced campaigner also praised the Australia bowling attack for troubling him throughout the series. Notably, he was caught-behind 5 times out of the 8 innings during the series where he had played.
"Credit also goes to the Australian team because they did a lot of homework on what I did on the last series there. It wasn't easy to break that gameplan but after a couple of Test matches I found my rhythm, concentration back, I trusted what I was doing and I was able to score runs in the last two Tests," Pujara concluded.