Lessons from a 'Pandit': How Vidarbha plotted Cheteshwar Pujara's fall

In football there are certain goals scored through setpieces which are known to be straight out of the drawing board and Cheteshwar Pujaras dismissal on Monday could well be called a cricketing equivalent where Chandrakant Pandit was the master plannerOne of the shrewdest tacticians in domestic circuit Pandit has tons of experience in orchestrating big wins for domestic heavyweights like Mumbai and he ensured that his men studied chinks in India stars armouryThat Pujara remains tentative at the beginning of the innings is a wellknown fact and Vidarbha bowlers only aim was to see that he is not allowed to dig his heels in order to score a Daddy HundredLeftarm spinner Aditya Sarwate who claimed the biggest prize of his career revealed that they had kept an eye on Pujara during the Australia series and had found one weakness to exploitSarwate who has 131 firstclass wickets to his credit declared without hesitation that today he has got his careers biggest wicket in PujaraWe had a team meeting and had studied his batting style Pujara remains tentative in the beginning and just jabs not coming fully forward at deliveries We had watched during the Australia series so the plan was not to let him use his feet He likes stepping out so we had to curtail his shots said Sarwate who had Pujara caught in the first slip by veteran Wasim JafferIt was ideal to attack Pujara as only 10 minutes were left for the tea break There was turn on offer with Saurashtra having already lost two wicketsWe had to attack The tea was approaching just 10 minutes were left so we brought a forward shortleg The ball was spinning so a backward silly point and a slip was also there to put pressure on him And it worked the 29yearold said after the days playPujara was dismissed for just 1 and stayed on wickets for just 16 minutes facing 11 deliveries in the processIt was a rare single digit score for Pujara who was instrumental in Indias historic Test series win in Australia He came into this match with scores of 45 131 11 67 193 and 106 in his last six inningsSarwate took three of the five Saurashtra wickets that fell to put Vidarbha on top as the visitors are still 154 runs behind their first innings total of 312 all outAnd this was after their tail wagged very effectively to add 112 runs to their overnight total of 200 for seven However Sarwate said their side is still not happyIf they were down by six or seven wickets it would have been more satisfying Its not a rank turner and their opener Snell Patel is still batting well he addedPatel who was unbeaten on 87 said they were still not out of the gameThey also batted well in the morning and we can do the same tomorrow This slow wicket suits my style as I play on backfoot The wicket is not difficult it batting may look difficult but it is not Patel said when asked how he made batting look easy when his colleagues struggledCatch up on all the latest sports news and updates here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updatesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Except for the change in headline the story has been provided ASIS AS AVAILABLE without any verification or editing from our side Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever