Pat Cummins Names Cheteshwar Pujara as Toughest Opponent
Pat Cummins has spent a career hunting the game’s best. Yet when he’s asked to name the toughest Indian he has ever bowled to, his mind goes straight back to one man who rarely hit him off the square.
Cheteshwar Pujara.
Not Virat Kohli. Not Rohit Sharma. Pujara – the man who blocked, blunted and slowly drained Australia’s famed pace attack across two epic Border-Gavaskar Trophy triumphs.
‘Death by a thousand papercuts’
In a recent promotional video for Prime Video Sport, Cummins was asked to pick the toughest opponent he’d faced from seven countries: India, Pakistan, New Zealand, England, Sri Lanka, South Africa and the West Indies.
For India, he didn’t hesitate.
“India, I'm going to say, Pujara. Really hard to get out. Just like death by a thousand papercuts. Happy to face 100 dot balls if he wanted to. Not going to give you a chance,” Cummins said in the clip shared on social media.
Those words carry the weight of history. Across 25 Tests against Australia, Pujara scored 2,074 runs at an average of 49.38. Almost half of those – 993 runs – came in Australia, where fast bowlers usually dictate terms. He peeled off three centuries and five fifties there, with a highest score of 193, and he did it not with flair, but with sheer bloody-minded resistance.
Every leave. Every forward defence. Every session he survived chipped away at Australian belief. Cummins, Mitchell Starc and Josh Hazlewood kept coming; Pujara just kept saying no.
A career built on resistance
Pujara walked away from international cricket last year with a body of work that explains Cummins’ respect. The right-hander finished with 7,195 runs in 103 Tests for India, averaging 43.6, with 19 hundreds and 35 fifties. He also played five ODIs, adding 51 runs in a format that never truly suited his method.
But his legacy is stitched into those marathon Test innings, especially against Australia. He didn’t just score runs; he absorbed punishment and time, allowing India’s stroke-makers to play around him and its bowlers to attack with scoreboard pressure behind them.
No surprise, then, that when Cummins was asked to name the toughest, his mind went back to the man who turned fast bowling spells into endurance contests.
McCullum, Ajmal and a gallery of greats
The exercise didn’t stop with India. Cummins worked his way around the cricketing map, picking out opponents who left a mark on him – and every name he chose has already stepped away from the international stage.
From New Zealand, he chose Brendon McCullum, now England’s white-ball coach but once the explosive opener who tried to tear new balls apart.
“From New Zealand, I played Brendon McCullum a couple of times when he was really going hard at the top of the order," Cummins recalled. Those brief encounters were enough. McCullum didn’t need long stays at the crease to unsettle a bowler; a few overs of unrelenting aggression could wreck a spell.
Pakistan brought a different kind of challenge. Cummins has faced modern stars like Babar Azam, Shaheen Shah Afridi and Haris Rauf, but his pick came from an earlier era of mystery spin: Saeed Ajmal.
“Pakistan, Saeed Ajmal. It was like the last ball of the over; I walked in, Saeed Ajmal just goes, and I went, what? Clean bowled. I have never seen anything like that," Cummins said.
One ball. One bewildered walk back. Enough to stay in the memory.
From England, he went for Sir Alastair Cook, the relentless accumulator who ground down attacks over a decade. South Africa’s slot belonged to AB de Villiers, the shot-maker who could turn any length into a scoring opportunity and any field into a puzzle for the bowler, while Sri Lanka’s representative was Tillakaratne Dilshan, the inventive opener who brought risk and audacity to the top of the order.
For the West Indies, Cummins named Chris Gayle, the hulking left-hander whose presence alone can change the mood of a game. A few overs of Gayle in full swing can make even the quickest bowler feel suddenly very small.
A list from a fading era
One detail stands out. Every player Cummins mentioned has retired from international cricket. Pujara, McCullum, Ajmal, Cook, de Villiers, Dilshan, Gayle – a roll call of men who defined an era and tested the limits of a fast bowler’s skill, stamina and nerve.
Cummins still faces a new generation of stars across formats, but when he looks back at the toughest puzzles he’s had to solve, his mind drifts to a different time.
And at the heart of that list sits Pujara, the quiet man who turned defence into a weapon and left even the world’s best quicks feeling like they were being slowly, remorselessly worn down.
