Credit: BCCI
The last time that Cheteshwar Pujara, once a formidable force in India's Test line-up, played a five-day contest was in 2023, interestingly at The Oval, the current venue for the national of the ongoing Test against England. At the same time, the last match that Ajinkya Rahane played for India's Test team, in which he even led the side, was also in 2023, but against West Indies in Caribbean. And now it seems that it may just have been the last time ever that both Rahane and Pujara represented India even as the two are yet to announce their retirements. But why does one feel that?
In a latest news, now confirmed by several sports publications, Cheteshwar Pujara and Ajinkya Rahane, who had been regulars in domestic cricket despite falling out of flavour with the selectors for India reprsentation, have been dropped from the Duleep Trophy squad.
Having not been picked for the West Zone Team for the Duleep Trophy, it might just be curtains on the India careers of both Pujara and Rahane. The domestic side is being led by Shardul Thakur.
No comeback anytime soon for Pujara and Rahane?
Their hopes, therefore, of making a comeback into the national side now stand dashed and maybe, for permanence. What is also a huge development, in parallel to Ajinkya Rahane and Cheteshwar Pujara not being picked for the Duleep Trophy contests is that current members of the Indian cricket team, rising batter Yashasvi Jaiswal as well as Shreyas Iyer, the latter who most famously led his Punjab franchise into the IPL 2025 finals, have both been selected for the popular domestic tournament.
But for now, it seems it is curtains for Rahane and Pujara. While the Maharashtra batter, who also led India in Test cricket on a few occasions, played 85 Tests (alongside 90 ODIs) for the country, Pujara was a veteran of 103 Tests from which he scored north of 7,000 runs. The two have earned widespread respect for their technically sound ways of batting, a much-needed skillset in the game's longest format.
