Cliff Notes – A tale of two Pujaras: one took body blows, the other notes
- Cheteshwar Pujara’s wife, Puja, transitioned from a corporate career to managing her husband’s cricket career, documenting their family’s journey through her journal.
- The couple navigated the emotional challenges of cricket, with Puja learning to support Pujara during his struggles, including his dropping from the team and the pressures of public scrutiny.
- Puja’s memoir, “The Diary of a Cricketer’s Wife,” offers a candid account of the highs and lows faced by cricketers’ families, highlighting the importance of mental health and support in sports.
A tale of two Pujaras: one took body blows, the other notes
A lot happens in a cricketer’s life. The binaries of wins and losses aside, there are various other ups and downs. For a cricketer’s family, they experience these vicariously when they hear from or watch and read about their loved one.
Cheteshwar Pujara’s family might have been less aware of the ins and outs of his career than other cricketers’ families. Pujara, by his own admission, is a private person. Sharing his thoughts didn’t come naturally to him, and indeed, he did not want to put second-hand pressure on his family by telling them about the trials and stresses in his life. But he worked on opening up over the years and got better at it.
His wife, Puja, did not follow cricket or know who Pujara was before marrying him, well so she claims. Coming to the sport afresh, she wanted to know more about it and took a deep interest in his career. Over time, she learnt more about the game and its various aspects. Inspired by Andre Agassi’s book, Open, she began journalling her experience as the wife of an India cricketer.
An MBA graduate, Puja quit her corporate job, which she loved, after her wedding. When the couple’s first daughter was three, she wanted to get back to work, but decided that she would be Pujara’s manager, as she didn’t have the time to give to a full-time job. On the other hand, accompanying him on long cricket tours would leave her with not a lot to do. Over the years, she had made notes about conversations with the Pujara family.
Her father-in-law, Arvind, would describe their struggles from years gone by, talk about the challenges the family went through so Pujara could play cricket, and describe the bond Pujara shared with his mother. Puja would listen keenly, and thanks to her sharp memory, write it all down in her diary later.
In 2021, Pujara suggested she collate her notes into a book. That had been Puja’s motive for keeping a journal, which she had not spoken of before – the hope that it might turn into a book someday. That book has now been published: The Diary of a Cricketer’s Wife is an unusual memoir, Puja’s account of the bumpy ride the family of a cricketer goes through.
It belongs in a sparsely populated genre, of which the best known are perhaps the tour books of Frances Edmonds, wife of former England spinner Phil Edmonds, though those were more by way of humorous travelogues and therefore different in nature and tone from Puja Pujara’s book.
“I had to be very prepared before suggesting [she] write the book,” Pujara says. “I was a little uncomfortable at times about what people would think about what I was doing or what my thought process was. But I told her I don’t mind [the book] because this is the truth and you have seen my journey.”
Cheteshwar Pujara fended off a short ball barrage
Puja agrees. “I told him I am not going to portray you as a saint. You are a good human being, but the book won’t be just glorifying everything. There will be the hard parts and vulnerabilities. You have an inspiring journey, and I want someone to take inspiration.
“I think most [cricketers’] partners would relate to what I’m saying – that you are riding the same highs and the same lows. And while it is easy to say, it is a whole new thing when you are actually experiencing it.”
Puja had to get used to being a public figure after their marriage, and become aware that she needed to be careful of her image too, for the effects it might have on her husband’s. Even if she didn’t end up enhancing Pujara’s image, she certainly did not want to damage it.
It is relatively easy for a sportsperson to be in the public eye when things are going well. Pujara was in good form around the time of their courtship and marriage. The challenge came when the going got tough. When Pujara was dropped for the Sydney Test in 2015, it was heartbreak for Puja, she says. She felt it like a personal loss and like the world had turned upside down. She was in Australia for the tour and did not want to go to the SCG to watch the Test match.
That experience taught her the value of detachment – that as a close member of the cricketer’s family, she needed to offer her husband support rather than having her own emotional reaction to the incident adding to his distress.
“I had to gather courage, swallow that news and be there for him in whatever way he needed,” she says. “While it is very disheartening, you have to understand that only 11 players can play. That somebody else’s family is happy that the other person is getting to play. It took time for me to mature… We realised over time that [being dropped] is fine, but I wouldn’t take away any disappointment I had at that point in time.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was not Pujara who broke the news of his omission in Sydney to Puja. He found it tough to give his family such updates. He dealt with failures in his own way; instead of opening up, he would withdraw, trying to “protect the family” from disappointment.
“He wouldn’t realise that he’s going through something,” Puja says. “I had to tell him, ‘Boss, I think you need to take a step back and just pause for a second. I feel you are not on your A game mentally. Let’s talk about it.’ In a country like India, things like mental health weren’t addressed until recently. You’re so used to the hardships and the difficult times that you don’t realise sometimes [that] you may need to seek help.”
Cheteshwar Pujara’s wife Puja cheers him from the stands BCCI
Pujara credits his wife with helping him deal with failures better. She helped him stick to his cricket routine when he didn’t want to, during a low phase. His county stint with Yorkshire between 2015 and 2018 also enabled him to open up. The mental conditioning coach there helped him be less hard on himself. He made him realise that scoring a fifty too is an achievement, not just a hundred. “That was the first time I realised that I need to switch off from the game, divert my mind and talk about my failures also,” Pujara says. “When you succeed, you know what you have done has worked for you. But when you fail, it isn’t always about the technique; it could be a very small thing – like, you are not resting well or not sleeping well.”
While Puja could help her husband out with his mental battles, the blows inflicted by bowlers on the field were his alone to deal with. During the Brisbane Test in 2021, Pujara stood like an immovable force in the middle, staving off a bowling attack of Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins and Nathan Lyon. He repeatedly took blows to his body – elbow, thigh, neck, finger – and on the helmet grille, while scoring a crucial second-innings fifty. As a fan or a viewer, those hits added to the narrative of the Test match. Not for the wife, though.
“It was just a nightmare,” Puja says. “Watching it, I had a gush of many emotions all at once. I was worried and got in touch with the physio and team manager. I have messaged so many people, because some of [the blows] were closer to the head and that is very scary. I don’t know if I have it in me to relive it again,” she laughs.
When Pujara picked up his phone after the match, he saw a flood of text messages from her. “I am fine,” he wrote back. They spoke briefly and he rushed back to join the team celebrations for India’s second successive Test series win in Australia. “I was in pain, but it was a sweet pain because the Indian team had won the game and the series,” he says.
A year and four series after his Gabba knock, Pujara was dropped again from the Indian Test side. He was recalled six months later and played eight more matches, the World Test Championship final in June 2023 being the last.
Puja suggested a while ago that he look at life beyond playing cricket, and take up coaching or broadcasting, but he wasn’t on board then. Slowly his reluctance gave way and he took up some media work. He has been an expert on ESPNcricinfo’s match-analysis shows, which, he says, has enabled him to explore another side of the game and understand his own game better in retrospect.
Pujara is 37. It has been close to two years since he last played for India, but he is not thinking about retirement just yet. The fire in him still burns. He enjoys the grind of preparing for a match, and the routines that help him stay hungry.
Irrespective of what happens in his journey from here on, Pujara will know he has a pillar of support alongside him. The one who told his story to the world as she watched and lived it off the field.
