A Mumbai schoolboy made history on Tuesday when he became the first batsman in any class of cricket to score 1,000 runs in a single innings, with Indian legend Sachin Tendulkar leading the plaudits.
Fifteen-year-old Pranav Dhanawade smashed his way to 1,009 not out off 323 balls as he obliterated a 117-year-old record for the highest number of runs scored in one innings.
Dhanawade, the son of an auto-rickshaw driver, soared past Arthur Collins’ previous record total of 628 in England in 1899, during an inter-school tournament in the western Indian city.
Photo: EPA
“Congrats #PranavDhanawade on being the first ever to score 1,000 runs in an innings. Well done and work hard. You need to scale new peaks!” Indian batting great Tendulkar said on Twitter.
Dhanawade’s epic knock included 129 fours and 59 sixes, and came at a phenomenal strike rate of 312.38. It ended when his KC Gandhi High School team declared on 1,465 at the ground at Thane in northern Mumbai. Their opponents, Arya Gurukul, had been bowled out earlier for just 31.
Dhanawade’s innings lasted 395 minutes and occurred during the Bhandari Cup school tournament, which is officially recognized by the Mumbai Cricket Association.
The teenager, who also plays as wicketkeeper, surpassed Collins’ score on Monday, finishing the day on 652 not out, before crossing the 1,000 mark after lunch on Tuesday.
“I have always been a big-hitter. When I started, I never thought about breaking the record,” Dhanawade told the Hindustan Times after his opening-day knock. “The focus was never that. I just played my natural game, which is to attack from the word go.”
“After reaching 300, my coach Harish Sharma told me to play on. I did not know of the world record, but we had the Indian record in mind,” he added, referring to the previous highest national individual total of 546.
Dhanawade’s monumental achievement sent Twitter into a frenzy. His name trended in India, with excited, but also nervous, cricket fans posting regular score updates as he neared the 1,000 mark.
Cricket expert Ayaz Memon said it would be a phenomenal feat for a cricketer to score four digits at any level of the game.
“It is just incredible. Scoring 1,000 runs in less than two days at this speed is a great achievement,” Memon said.
Translating his accomplishment from club to international level would be a big challenge for the teenager, he said.
However, the omens are good — Tendulkar, Dhanawade’s batting hero, first burst onto the scene in 1988, aged 14, when he scored 326 not out in a Mumbai school match.
He went on to become the highest scorer in the history of Test cricket as well as the first player to score 100 international centuries.
“Another @sachin_rt in the making?” Indian international spin bowler Harbhajan Singh tweeted on Tuesday.
Collins, who himself was born in India, was aged just 13 when he entered the record books for his score at Clifton College in Bristol, where a plaque honors his exploits.
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