India’s batting mainstay and Baroda’s pride Cheteshwar Pujara has created an uniue record of sorts (albeit unintentionally) by batting in all the five days of the just concluded Kolkata Test against Sri Lanka.

India, the top-ranked Test team, lived up to its billing though it stuttered on the first -3 days of the Test which ended in a gripping final session yesterday.  Chasing a target of 230-odd runs to win in possible 50 overs, Lanka played only 26.3 overs but lost 7 wickets, thus taking India to the threshold of victory. Lanka breathed a huge sigh of relief when the umpires called ‘play’ citing bad-light conditions at 04:31 p.m.

The first two days of the Test were hit badly by rains with only 20 overs getting bowled collectively on these two days. Pujara, who took the field when K.L. Rahul got out first-ball to Suranga Lakmal, remained not out when the match was called off after around 10-odd overs and batted for an hour the next day when badlight again interrupted. He resumed on the third day to score 52 out of India’s paltry total of 172.

On the fourth day, he came to bat late in the day after Shikhar Dhawan and K.L. Rahul made amends for their first innings failure and smashed the Lankan bowling around. Pujara replaced Dhawan, who got out within a stroke of a Test hundred. He remained unbeaten on 02 and continued to bat on the fifth day yesterday morning.

Pujara thus becomes the third Indian after the famed M.L. Jaisimha (the childhood idol of cricketing legend Sunny Gavaskar) and India’s present coach Ravi Shastri who had done son in the past. Incidentally, all the three Indian efforts have occurred in the famed Eden Gardens at Kolkata.