Cricket stadium in USA to be named after Sunil Gavaskar

In India, stadiums are mostly named after politicians. Names of players are reduced to adorning stands here and there. Players like Gavaskar, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly have stands named after them in stadiums in Mumbai and Kolkata. But come October, Gavaskar will get a stadium named after him in the United States of America.

Strange it may read, considering the fact that cricket is still an alien sport in the land of baseball, but again, the former India captain is no ordinary cricketer. He will thus join Vivian Richards (Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Anituga) and Darren Sammy (Darren Sammy National Cricket Stadium in Gros Islet, St Lucia), the only cricketers who've grounds named after them.

The stadium will be known as the Sunil Gavaskar Field, in the line of many fields in America.

"It's a wonderful honour to have a ground named after you especially in a country where cricket is not the premier sport," Gavaskar told TOI on Tuesday. It's also reported that the project is being spearheaded by Kentucky-based Jai Bokey, a former employee of sports marketing company Professional Management Group.

Gavaskar, regarded as one of the greatest batsmen ever to have played cricket, said that grounds should preferably be named after sportspersons.

"While it is always preferable to have sports facilities named after sportspersons, there are plenty of other non-sportspersons who make a contribution to the growth, development and betterment of sports so the grounds can be named after them too, but yes ideally , grounds should be named after those who have made a contribution to sports," said Gavaskar.

He also added that "once the ground is named after an individual there should not be any sponsor's name before or after it, for that completely dilutes the honour of naming the ground after the person."

Gavaskar played 125 Tests and 108 ODIs, scoring 10122 and 3092 runs respectively.