He lost his mother when he was just four years old. After he started playing cricket, as a junior schoolboy, he travelled every day from Virar to Bandra in a packed suburban local train during peak hours, his kitbag almost his own size in tow; and Mumbai’s railway commuters, who normally don’t give an inch, often made space for him and his heavy kit while his father, a migrant from Gaya (Bihar) engaged in the garment trade, stood all through the journey, clutching at the handles overhead. When he turned nine, a local Shiv Sena legislator heard of the boy’s daily ordeal and offered him a home in Vakola, a short distance from his training ground in Bandra. His school, college, coaches, captains and mentors backed him, seeing in him genuine talent as he notched up score after big score, getting a world-record 546 for his school Rizvi Springfield and centuries on debut in the Ranji Trophy and Duleep Trophy later and going on to lead India’s Under-19 team to the junior World Cup win in New Zealand earlier this year.
And on Thursday, Mumbai prodigy Prithvi Shaw, exactly 18 years and 329 days old and batting with not a touch of the raw about him, justified the faith of all who believed in him: he became the youngest Indian to score a Test hundred on debut, navigating a not-too-threatening West Indies attack on Day One of the first Test at Rajkot’s SCA stadium with ease.
In the process, he’s now the second-youngest Indian—after Sachin Tendulkar, who’d once told him not to change his grip—to get a Test hundred.
Prithvi soars on launch in Rajkot
Tendulkar was 17 years and 107 days old when he cracked his debut ton in England in 1990. And, of course, Prithvi is the only Indian to have slammed hundreds on debut in the Ranji Trophy, Duleep Trophy as well as Tests.
As soon as he sprinted back to complete his second run which took him to his hundred, Prithvi leapt high before unleashing a punch in the air—a sight Indian cricket fans think they’re likely to see again and again for a long time.
The second-youngest opener to play for India, Prithvi seemed to treat the largely mediocre attack like he’d treat schoolboy bowlers on the city’s maidans in childhood. Cutting, flicking and driving majestically, he raced to his century in 99 balls—making it the third-fastest ton on Test debut. After 19 sweetly-timed fours, he was eventually out caught-and-bowled off a Devendra Vishoo delivery, which spun and stopped on him, for 134 off 154 balls.
There are still rough edges to Shaw’s game. He can be a bit too flashy at times outside off-stump and often takes one risk too many. Barring Shannon Gabriel, the West Indies didn’t have a top-quality bowler to offer, and the pitch was as flat as one can expect at Rajkot, but that takes nothing away from the temperament the 18-year-old showed.
How much the teenager is willing to improve his game could be gauged by just one story. Since the Under-19 World Cup, he’d developed a technical problem: his back foot tended to move towards legstump, which didn’t allow his full body to get behind the line. Before going to England with the India A team this year, Prithivi worked hard to correct the flaw—and succeeded in rectifying it.
But then he’s been a fighter all along. After falling off the radar for a while after his world-record school score, he bounced back with consistent performances for Mumbai’s junior teams, thanks to help from a local coach, Jwala Singh. Post his first-class debut, Prithvi did well for India ‘A’ under coach Rahul Dravid. Playing for Delhi Daredevils in the IPL, where Ricky Ponting is coach, further swelled Shaw’s stock, and another Aussie great Mark Waugh compared his strokeplay to Tendulkar’s.
If the crowds in Rajkot were celebrating, so were people in Manpur, a colony on the outskirts of Gaya in Bihar. Prithvi’s parents lived in this colony, famous for its powerloom units and producing IITians in droves, before migrating to Mumbai. On Thursday, visitors thronged the three-storey house of Prithvi’s grandfather Ashok Gupta, who runs a small cloth shop there. Gupta was greeted with sweets and flowers, and crackers were burst in Shivcharan Lane, where the cloth shop stands.
—WITH INPUTS FROM PATNA
