London, Aug 14 (Agency) Sussex captain Cheteshwar Pujara smashed a second consecutive ton in a Royal London ODI Cup match against Surrey here on Sunday. This was Pujara’s back-to-back century, the first one he hammered was against Warwickshire on Friday, scoring 107 in 79 balls His blazing knock included a 22-run over, in which he blew three boundaries and a six off Liam Norwell in the 45th over helped Sussex post a mammoth 311 in 50 overs. In his entire innings, Pujara clobbered 20 boundaries and 5 sixes in 131-ball 174 runs, which helped Sussex post 378/6 in 50 overs.
Pujara has had a tremendous run this season at the County Championship Division Two, scoring a total of 1094 runs in 13 innings at an average of 109.40. He scored five hundreds including three double tons. Pujara’s unbeaten 201 in his first innings of the season against Derbyshire in April was his first triple-digit score in First-Class cricket in more than two years. His last century before that had come in January 2020 for Saurashtra against Karnataka in a Ranji Trophy match. These hallmark innings prompted the national selectors to pick him up for the rescheduled fifth Test against England in July, in which he scored 13 and 66 while opening the batting. Pujara was dropped from the squad for the home series against Sri Lanka in February due to lack of runs behind him, averaging 26.29 since the beginning of 2020 in Tests.