Cheteshwar Pujara surpassed Vijay Merchant's tally of 11 double centuries and now has the most double hundreds in first-class cricket by an Indian player.
Cheteshwar Pujara has already scored two centuries in the Test series against Sri Lanka. (Source: AP)
After enduring a mediocre run of form in the ongoing Ranji Trophy season, Cheteshwar Pujara made history as he slammed his 12th double ton in first-class cricket on Thursday during the Group B encounter between Saurashtra and Jharkhand. With this knock, he surpassed Vijay Merchant’s tally of 11 double centuries and now has the most double hundreds in first-class cricket by an Indian player. He is followed by Vijay Hazare, Sunil Gavaskar, and Rahul Dravid, all of whom who have 10 double tons. Among Asian player with most double hundreds, only Kumar Sangakkara is ahead of Pujara with 13 double tons
Continuing with his good work from day one where he was unbeaten on 125, Pujara kept picking the gaps at will and was exceptional with his footwork, to counter the threat of spinners. In his innings of 205 which came off 355 deliveries Pujara also stroked 28 boundaries before being dismissed by Shahbaz Nadeem. Courtesy of Pujara’s knock, Saurashtra powered their way to a mammoth first innings score of 553/9 dec. Chirag Jani was the other notable contributor with an innings of 108.
Prior to this innings of 205, Pujara seemed out of form as he had a string of low scores. But what makes this knock even more important is it came when his team needed him the most. At one point Saurashtra were in trouble at 46/3 but Pujara took the responsibility upon himself and played a captain’s knock to see his side out of trouble. Earlier, on day one, Pujara had brought up his 42nd first class hundred.
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