Cheteshwar Pujara: The man who loves Asterisks

In many ways, the asterisk denotes a special meaning, a sort of footnote. When there’s a typo in an SMS, it is customary to fix the mistake by sending another message. You add an ‘asterisk’ to the message’s beginning or the end.

In economics, the symbol is used after a letter to indicate an optimal variable such as price, output or employment.

The United States Olympic committee launched an anti-steroid campaign called ‘Play Asterisk Free’,  aimed at teenagers. The campaign, whose logo uses a heavy asterisk, was first launched in 2008 under the name ‘Don’t Be An Asterisk’.

Movies censor slang or abuse words with an asterisk. From banal to cerebral, its meaning varies. But in cricket, the asterisk means you are a victor. Undefeated. 

It determines one’s average. The greater it is, the closer you are to greatness. The world is yet to decode what drives Cheteshwar Pujara to play those marathon innings. It is that small sign — the asterisk.

Don Bradman had 10 asterisks in 52 Tests, Graeme Pollock had four in 23, George Headley had as many in 22, Herbert Sutcliffe had nine in 54 in the 60-plus average category. Steve Waugh had 46 in 168 Tests and Chanderpaul 42 in 147 in the 50-plus bracket.

Pujara’s asterisk story dates back to the time he was playing junior age-group tournaments. His friend Pradeep recalls an instance when Chintu, as he is fondly called, scored a double-century before getting out.

For a budding cricketer, it should have been a day for celebration. Not for Chintu. He had scored a double ton and was well-set. How on earth could he lose his wicket?

Pradeep says, “Chintu’s father Arvind Pujara always insists that there should be an asterisk after your score. That makes you a complete cricketer. He believes there is no high in the sport than a not-out. It means you have conquered every bowler and can walk out with your head held high.”

The asterisk was indoctrinated when Pujara was just three. Arvind’s friend, a photographer, had shot a picture of the child posing with a bat and gleefully demonstrating an imaginary pull shot. He  wasn’t looking at the direction of the imaginary ball. Wearing a cap that was partly masking his face, he just smiled at the camera.

“When I saw the photograph. I was startled by his pose,” reminisces Arvind, himself a former Saurashtra cricketer.

And thus began Pujara’s initiation to cricket under a tree bang opposite their modest one-room quarters at the Railway Colony.

At the Railway Ground, the father and son bonded over cricket, redefined their relationship and charted out the stance, grip and backlift. All for the lofty aspiration — to play for India.
Dusting off his late wife Reena Pujara’s framed photograph, Pujara senior says, “Chintu is more like his mother. He has inherited her calmness, poise, patience and equanimity.”

“As a kid,” he further recalls, “when he played video games, my wife would ask him to offer prayers first. Only then he would be allowed to indulge. One day, I confronted her saying she was blackmailing the kid conditionally. My wife asked me what was the fault if she was leading him to a good habit of faith in god at the expense of a video game.”

The formative years of India’s newest No 3 bat were so removed from that of a normal boy. Arvind says, “No relatives could visit us after 9 pm since the lights would be out. We cut down on our family outings so that his schedule wasn’t affected. Reena made it a habit of offering almonds and cashewnuts   to Chintu so that he could have healthy food in a vegetarian home. He has never consumed junk.”

Battling to control his emotions, with his upper lip overpowering his lower one and stoicism resisting the impending tears, Pujara senior recalls the most dreaded day of his life.

“The year was 2005. Chintu was playing an U-19 inter-district match. He told his mother that he was on his way back. Upon reaching home, he saw Reena was no more, and I was wailing like a kid. His calmness and poise stunned me. I sometimes wonder how he managed to consume the news of his mother with such maturity,” he says, ruing the fact that his wife isn’t there to watch Pujara play for India.

Arpit Vasvada and Kunal Karamchandani, two of Pujara’s closet friends, claim that when he’s not playing cricket, he is immersed in reading spiritual and motivational books. He shares a deep connect with Shri Hari Prasadji Maharaj, his guru, who taught him to “live without his mother and be independent”.

Away from the cacophonous Rajkot, we are now at a quite corner of the Ayodhya residency. The Pujaras have moved into a double-storey ivory brown-coloured bungalow here.

Arvind retrieves a file comprising records of his son’s big hundreds, starting from his junior days. There’s a write-up by the late Trevor Chesterfield who watched Pujara bat in the 2006 U-19 World Cup. Chesterfield likens him to two batting giants: Barry Richards and Rahul Dravid.

A 10-minute drive from their home takes you to Yagraj Nagar where senior Pujara has set up an academy.

Bereft of grass, the academy is covered with fine crushed stones to keep the flying dust in check. A sole concrete pitch with four poles supporting a net is Pujara’s workshop. A turf pitch and a bowling machine is on their wish-list.

Arvind chuckles when asked how a concrete pitch helps Chintu prepare better. He is obviously not in a mood to reveal his son’s practice secrets. One of the trainees here, Vedant, says beating Pujara’s bat is the only moral victory for him. “He never gets out because he never plays a rash shot,” says Sutarth, another trainee.

He just loves to be there on that squarish piece of land. Saurashtra coach Debu Mitra would tell you about a certain Ranji match where he noticed Pujara closing his bat against the spinners.

“All thanks to his father, he has a neat technique,” Mitra says. “But during the lunch break of this match, I told him not to close the face of his bat. He didn’t for the rest of his innings and scored a 170-odd.”

Back to Matru Guru Krupa, Pujara’s bungalow. The vim and verve is back following the addition of a new member, Puja, the bahu.

Puja infuses life and method to the house that had gone silent after Reena Pujara’s death.
The Pujara household is understandably a lot busier and boisterous these days.

Chintu, meanwhile, is busy collecting asterisks. While the current breed is obsessed with the zeroes they could attach to their already-fat IPL salaries, Pujara is determined to add more number of hours to his stay at the wicket.

“Don’t know where life and cricket will take me to,” he tells his friends philosophically. “It’s not in my control. What’s in my control is to be a nice human being and that’s what I want the world to know me as.”

The writer works with ESPN-Star Sports