The boundaries, especially square off the wicket, were short. The opponents were half his height, if not age. Still, >Pranav Dhanawade deserves all the accolades for having become the first cricketer to score 1,000 runs in an innings in a competitive match.
The Class 10 student from the KC Gandhi School in Kalyan, an eastern suburb approximately 60 kilometres from south Mumbai, achieved the milestone on Tuesday in the Thane district inter-school tournament for the HT Bhandari Shield against a depleted Arya Gurukul school from the same suburb.
When >he came in to bat unbeaten on 652 , he had already recorded the personal best in any minor cricket. All of his schoomates, along with his family and friends who had turned up for the match, had anticipated that the next milestone was obviously the four-figure mark.
By the time he walked in to lunch unbeaten on 921, the crowd at the Wayle Maidan in Kalyan had become more than sizeable, thanks to a hoard of mediapersons. While he had refrained from spelling it out to The Hindu the evening earlier, for the first time Dhanawade stated “1000 is the next target.”
And it didn’t take him long after lunch as he reached the milestone with a straight six, the last of 59 maximums, the whole crowd roared in unison. Father Prashant, an auto-driver who till last year used to drive his son down to nooks and corners of the maximum city, along with coach Mobin Shaikh burst into an impromptu dance along with Dhanawade’s teammates.
The 15-year-old’s 1,009 not out off 323 balls obliterated a 117-year-old record for the highest number of runs scored in one innings which stood in the name of Arthur Collins’s previous record total of 628 in England in 1899. “When I went in to lunch on 921 that was the first time I thought of scoring a thousand runs. The next target now is to get into Mumbai’s Ranji Trophy squad, Dhanawade told The Hindu later in the evening.
By then, he had been congratulated by all in sundry, including the great Sachin Tendulkar and India’s World Cup-winning captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni. The state government had announced it will take care of all his cricketing expenses in thee future.
While the Dhanawade household deserved to celebrate Pranav’s feat, one couldn’t spare a thought for the toddlers of the Arya Gurukul school.
The mediocre opposition team conceded 1463 runs and were bundled out for 31 and 51, respectively, on either side of Dhanawade’s onslaught.
But they were far from being disheartened. “We went out for a snack and shared some happy memories,” said Yogesh Jagtap of Arya Gurukul school.
