When Pujara stepped out against Rohit’s advice and paid the price!

India’s ODI captain Rohit Sharma recounted a little-known and surprising anecdote involving Test specialist Cheteshwar Pujara on Friday during the launch of The Diary of a Cricketer’s Wife, authored by Pujara’s wife, Puja.

Interrupting the event with a grin, Rohit turned to Pujara and teased, “I`m sure it`s not written in the book. Is there anything regarding that West Indies tour of India A 2012. What happened?”

Pujara, initially hesitant, eventually opened up about the incident that had remained largely under wraps. “I haven`t told. I mean, she is aware but she doesn`t know the details. I am a vegetarian. So we were looking for a vegetarian meal at night. It was in TNT (Trinidad and Tobago) where we went out at 11 in the evening. We didn`t find the meal but when we were walking back, I was mugged. I can`t tell you in detail about it but that`s the story he is referring to,” he revealed.

Rohit, elaborating on the context, added, “Moral of the story is that he can be stubborn. We told him. We warned him not to go out in the night. Don`t step out after 9 PM. This is the West Indies.”

The Mumbai batter also praised Pujara’s resilience and mental strength, especially for making a successful comeback after sustaining serious injuries early in his international career.

“(It was) such a big injury (and) such a bad injury. Both his ACL were gone. For any cricketer, leave alone if you are not an athlete or not playing any sport, for a sportsman it`s very, very tough if you lose both your ACL,” Rohit said.

Despite being the subject of good-natured jokes among teammates about his running technique, Pujara proved his mettle, going on to play over 100 Test matches for India. Rohit said, “We used to tease him about his running technique and all that but he managed to play more than 100 Test matches for India after that, a lot of credit goes to him for how he managed it. Great amount of dedication and passion he had to play the sport.”

Reflecting on his career, Pujara named the 2016–17 Border-Gavaskar Trophy against Australia as the most demanding series he ever played.

“I can mention one incident, in 2017, when India was bowled out for 200 odd runs against Australia, that was one of the toughest Test series I`ve been part of,” Pujara said. “This was the second Test match at Bangalore, and the team didn`t do well in the first innings, and we were again in a spot of bother in the second innings, but I spoke to Anil (Kumble) bhai about how to tackle Nathan Lyon, and he came up with a technical suggestion.”

This article first appeared on Mid Day