Recently, Cheteshwar Pujara decided to play county cricket in England. He is part of Sussex in LV Insurance County Championship. In his very first match of this year, he scored a double century for the team in time of crisis. He received support from the captain on the non striker end who scored 243 runs.
It was an wonderful display of batting by Cheteshwar Pujara which substantially helped Sussex to draw the match. During this lengthy inning, Pujara faced 387 balls and played an unbeaten knock of 201 runs with the help of 23 fours. Also, he was supported by captain Tom Haines, who played a knock of 243 runs. Together they shared a record 356 runs partnership for the third wicket.
With this century, Cheteshwar Pujara became only the second Indian to score a double century in the County Championship. Former Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin scored double hundreds on two separate occasions. First, he scored 212 against Leicestershire in 1991 and then he scored 205 against Durham in 1994. He scored both these double centuries while playing for Derbyshire. Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi also has four doubles in county cricket, but he scored this score when he was a cricketer of the English team.
Cheteshwar Pujara has scored a century in first class cricket after 52 innings. He last crossed the 100-run mark in January 2020 against Karnataka. In these two years, he scored 1518 runs at an average of 30.36 with the help of 14 fifties.
On the basis of this innings of Pujara, Sussex managed to escape first defeat of the county season. Derbyshire declared the first innings at 505 for eight, in response to which Sussex were bundled out for 174 in the first innings and were forced to follow-on. Pujara was dismissed after scoring 6 runs in the first innings. At the end of the last day’s play, Sussex scored 513 runs for the loss of 3 wickets in the second innings and the match ended in a draw.