Pujara Tells Suthar to Skip the IPL Chase and Stay a Test Spinner

Suthar’s Galle match in three numbers

India closed out the first Test at Galle on Wednesday by 165 runs. Suthar, 24, finished the match with ten wickets, including six in the second innings, in only his second appearance for India. The same bowler had already taken a five-wicket haul on his Test debut against Afghanistan in June, so the Galle ten-for is the second match-defining red-ball spell of his short international career.

The numbers are small in sample but large in signal. Two Tests in, two hauls of five or more, and both on surfaces where left-arm spin has historically worked in Sri Lanka. That is the record Pujara was asked about on air, and the record he used to frame the rest of his advice.

For context on the wider match: India took a 1-0 lead in the two-Test series with one game to play, and the win keeps the touring side ahead on the away ledger with a young spinner doing the heaviest wicket-taking work. Suthar’s ten-wicket match return is the headline bowling line of the tour so far, and the kind of line that turns a fringe squad member into a discussion point for the next selection meeting before the squad even lands back home.

The quote, in context

Pujara did not leave the message to inference. He told Sony Sports Network directly that India should treat Suthar as a Test bowler first. “Try to preserve him,” Pujara said, going on to argue that “all the young players might want to play the shorter format, but India should be looking to preserve him for the Test format.” He then addressed Suthar himself in the same interview: “Yes, he might want to play the IPL, but don’t go there… don’t change your strength,” and added the line that closes the loop: “Don’t change yourself just for the IPL.”

That is a three-part message. Preserve him. Don’t go chasing the IPL. Don’t reshape his game for it. Pujara has used the public platform of a broadcast interview because the decision he is concerned about, a young spinner choosing a T20 contract over a Test role, is one Indian cricket has lived through before, often at the cost of a red-ball specialist.

The article behind those words was filed by Piyush Thapa on Moneycontrol on 20 August 2026. The advice is recent, the quote is verbatim, and the context is a Test match that finished only hours earlier in Galle.

Why Pujara picked this fight publicly

Pujara is no longer in the playing XI. His career is over as an India batter, and his platform now is punditry and the longer conversation about how India develops bowlers. A public comment, on air, right after a Test win, lands differently from the same comment in a press conference two weeks later.

His concern is the pattern. Young bowlers with a Test skill get pulled toward the shortest format because that is where the contracts and the visibility sit, and the bowling action they bring into T20 cricket is rarely the action they carried out of the longer format. Pujara is asking for the opposite trade to happen here: the IPL access stays on the table, but the player’s craft and role stay rooted in red-ball work.

He is also speaking as a former batter who has batted for days alongside finger spinners. Left-arm spin with flight, dip and a holding role is exactly the kind of skill that disappears when a bowler is told to bowl back-of-the-length flat for powerplay economy. Pujara has seen that change from the non-striker’s end often enough to make the case before the contract is signed.

Timing matters too. The interview aired the same evening India closed out Galle. Suthar was still on the field taking applause when the broadcaster cut to the studio segment. Pujara’s words land on a player who is at the absolute peak of his Test stock, which is precisely the moment a wrong contract decision can quietly begin.

What it means for Suthar at the Titans

Suthar has played five IPL matches so far, taking two wickets in those games. He is currently part of the Gujarat Titans squad captained by Shubman Gill, which is one of the franchise environments in the IPL 2026 cycle that asks its spinners to bowl in powerplay conditions and on flat wickets rather than on fifth-day turners.

The Pujara message, read inside the Titans bubble, is simple. Continue to take the IPL contract when it comes. Treat it as a salary, not as a re-training programme. Bowl the lengths and air-seam that work on day four of a Test, even when the franchise would prefer a flatter, faster ball on day one of an IPL chase.

Suthar was born in Rajasthan and came through the red-ball pathway. His strongest recent matches, the Afghanistan debut and the Galle Test, both reward a bowler who pitches the ball up, flights it, and trusts the surface to do the work. That is the skill Pujara is naming when he says “don’t change your strength”.

It is also worth noting what Pujara did not say. He did not say Suthar should refuse an IPL offer, miss an auction cycle, or pull out of a franchise retention. The advice is narrower than a career break. It is a craft instruction dressed as a career warning: keep your Test muscle even when you are bowling four overs in a powerplay.

Where Suthar sits in India’s Test spin queue

India’s red-ball spin queue is no longer a single-name list. Ravichandran Ashwin and Ravindra Jadeja have defined the side for a decade, but the touring XI to Sri Lanka already included younger options and Suthar has now made the case for a permanent slot in two Tests.

Ten wickets in a Test win on a Sri Lankan surface is the kind of line on a CV that selectors treat seriously. Combined with a debut five-for against Afghanistan, Suthar is no longer a debutant to be managed. He is a candidate whose role has to be defended or passed over for the next Test, not the one after.

The selection conversation will not be a fight about Suthar’s ability. It will be a fight about how many frontline spinners India want to pick on sub-continental pitches, who pairs with whom, and whether the all-rounder slot is still a spin slot. Pujara is speaking into that conversation early, and he is speaking on Suthar’s side.

There is a quieter reading here as well. Suthar is not the only young spinner India has fast-tracked through recent home seasons, and the selectors will weigh him against the rest of that group when the next squad is named. A ten-wicket match return in a winning cause does not lock a slot for life, but it does make him harder to drop without a public reason. Pujara is providing exactly that public reason from the outside, framed as a piece of advice for the bowler rather than as a complaint about the selectors.

What the second Test will answer

The second Test of the India tour of Sri Lanka is the next event that turns Pujara’s advice into something more than punditry. Two questions are settled on the morning of that selection meeting. Whether India retain the same XI, which would mean Suthar keeps his place, and whether the side trusts the same spin-bowling template that closed out Galle.

If Suthar plays and bowls long spells again, Pujara’s case is being tested by results rather than by interviews. If Suthar is rotated, the message flips: the selectors believe the IPL footprint already is large enough for now, and the red-ball role can wait. The advice is on record, the bowler has the form, and the next squad announcement decides which side of that argument the team is on.

That last point is the one for fantasy players tracking the IPL to keep an eye on. A Test regular who holds his slot through the Sri Lanka tour enters the next IPL cycle with a stronger hand in any contract negotiation. A Test regular who is rested after one strong series enters the auction cycle as a bowler whose red-ball value is no longer in doubt, but whose T20 role is still being negotiated franchise by franchise.

Either way, the lines from Galle and the lines from the Sony Sports studio belong to the same conversation: which format owns a young Indian spinner’s identity, and who gets to decide. The Galle ten-wicket haul is the bowler’s answer so far. The second Test selection meeting is the next one that counts.