India hopefuls

India hopefuls

   The LC de Villiers Oval in Pretoria is about an hour's drive from the Wanderers in Johannesburg. Most of the 16 India A players will be hoping they can perform impressively enough at the former over the next three weeks, so that they can make it to the latter for a Test match three months later.

Leading this bunch will be a man who, just over a year ago, was part of a similar group of hopefuls on a plane to West Indies, and was looking to restart his international career that began with a lot of promise but had been halted by injury.

There were ten home Tests lined up in 2012-13. That was as good an opportunity as he would ever get to establish himself, but Pujara had missed over a year, his debut now only a memory.

The Test recall came, and Pujara has averaged 82.53 since, with two double centuries, and two big hundreds. While the Caribbean experience may not have helped much in tackling the attacks of England, Australia and New Zealand, West Indies was where Pujara began his comeback.