The Saurashtra Cricket Association has decided to felicitate both Cheteshwar Pujara and Ravindra Jadeja who have achieved a remarkable milestone in their career while representing their nation and state team on the field in white jersey. These two local boys from Saurashtra will be honoured during the ceremony for unveiling the new name of the SCA Stadium on February 14 ahead of the 3rd Test match between IND vs ENG at Rajkot. The stadium will be renamed as Niranjan Shah Stadium.
SCA President Jaydev Shah says that we will be felicitating both Pujara and Jadeja during the function for a new name of the stadium and felt it would have been special to see both their local boys Pujara and Jadeja take the field against England, but unfortunately, Pujara has been ignored from the squad selection despite having a very successful season with the bat in Ranji Trophy while Ravindra Jadeja got injured.
Pujara has represented India in 103 Test matches where he has scored 7195 runs in his career at an average of 43.6. He was seen as a successor of Rahul Dravid at the number 3 position for a long period, but in the last two years his career went down unfortunately as he is not in contention to be named in team India's Test squad and Ravindra Jadeja has achieved the feat of being number 1 ranked all-rounder and also for some time he was ranked as number 1 bowler in the ICC rankings.
Jadeja's bowling on sub-continent wickets has been very dangerous for the opponent team over the years and his combination with Ravichandran Ashwin over the years has been very destructive. Jadeja's contribution with the bat in the last five years at the lower order has also added a lot of value for his side. Pujara has been only the 13th cricketer to have represented team India in 100 Test matches.