India’s No.3 batsman in Test cricket – Cheteshwar Pujara is set to head towards England yet again as he has struck a deal for the upcoming County season with Yorkshire. He earlier had a stint with the club in April 2015 where he was slotted in as a replacement for Pakistan’s Younis Khan. The right-hander had scored 264 runs at an amazing average of 52.8 that year.
Pujara joining the English County will be wonderful for India cricket as Virat Kohli and Co. are set to tour England this year in the month of July. Pujara will join Yorkshire before they play their first game of the season on April 7th against Leeds Bradford MCCU. He will have a handful of experience of the English conditions before he joins the Indian team for 5 Tests against England.
Fourth stint in County cricket
In 2016, Cheteshwar Pujara played for Derbyshire while he represented Nottinghamshire in the following year. He will be out of action for a while for the Indian team as they don’t play Test cricket until June this year and so, it’s a great move by the middle-order batsman to head to County cricket to get accustomed to the English conditions. Pujara expressed his happiness for joining the club once again.
“I’m really excited to be able to have the opportunity to represent Yorkshire once again. It’s always nice to be able to come over here and play some County Cricket and I’m just as excited as I was last time to represent the Club. I love the passion the people of Yorkshire have for the game and they made me feel very welcome. I know quite a few of the players, so I’ll just try to play my natural game and score plenty of runs for the Club,” Cheteshwara Pujara was quoted as saying by Cricbuzz.
Pujara becomes the 3rd Indian player to play for Yorkshire after Sachin Tendulkar and Yuvraj Singh. Tendulkar was the first foreign cricketer to play for the club whereas Yuvraj featured for them in the 2003 season. The 30-year-old is delighted to play again for the County club where he’ll be accompanied by the Kiwi skipper Kane Williamson.
“It’s an honour for me to play for the same county as Yuvraj Singh and Sachin Tendulkar. Each time I’ve played county cricket it has improved me as a player. That’s the plan again in 2018. I just want to score as many runs as possible for Yorkshire and soak up as much as I can from the whole experience.” he added.
Stay updated with all the cricketing action, follow Cricadium on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram