5 things you must know about 14-year old cricket prodigy Prithvi Shaw

Prithvi Shaw’s name has been doing the rounds in the last three years because of some fine batting in school and age-group cricket. However, the Mumbai lad finds himself in the spotlight like never before after his record-breaking innings of 546 in the Harris Shield. Here are five things you need to know about one of India’s most prodigious talents.

- Shaw is just 14-years-old and captains the Mumbai U-16 team. The batsman started playing cricket when he was three years old — “He was shorter than the stumps he used to bat in front of,” Shaw’s father said in the documentary ‘ Beyond All Boundaries ’.

- Sachin Tendulkar once stopped by to watch Shaw bat . Could there be a greater compliment? Shaw plays for Rizvi Springfield, which is one of Mumbai’s best school teams and trains with Tendulkar’s son Arjun at the city’s famed MIG cricket club. “People come up to me and say they see Sachin Tendulkar in me. They compare me with God! It is in my best interest to ignore these comparisons and focus on my batting,” Shaw  told Indian Express .

- Shaw has amassed 4000 runs in the last three years across the circuit — mainly in school cricket competitions. Apt for a batsman whose commitment to cricket is crazy — he used to wake up at 4.30 AM to take the 6.09 train to Bandra for practice.

- Prithvi’s mother died when he was just four-years-old and his father shut his business to concentrate on bringing Prithvi up. At a young age, he is the family’s breadwinner after being signed up by former Indian spinner Nilesh Kulkarni’s sports management company for Rs 3 lakhs a year. More detail in this Indian Express report .

- According to  this Times of India report , Shaw has already played abroad in England for the Gloucestershire second team — which is just one level below first-class cricket. “I am a professional and when I see talent I know it. If he keeps up the work, in five years he will arguably be the best batsman in the world,” former English county cricketer and the founder JW cricket academy Julian Wood said about the teenager.

Click here to read more about Shaw’s record-breaking innings of 546.