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Indian High School Student Breaks Cricket Record

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

Now we're going to switch to that other sport with balls and bats - cricket. For the millions of fans all over the world - basically everywhere that's not the U.S. - there was a huge record breaker yesterday.

KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:

Pranav Dhanawade, a 15-year-old cricket player from Mumbai, hit 1,009 runs in one school match.

ANDY BULL: No one has ever scored more in a competitive game of cricket.

MCEVERS: That's Andy Bull. He's senior sports writer for The Guardian.

BULL: Every club match, every school match, every professional match, every international match, every game ever played, no one has ever scored more than this boy did. And not only did he beat the record; he smashed it, you know? He almost doubled it.

MCEVERS: That previous record was set more than a hundred years ago in 1899 when an English player scored 628 runs. So yeah, this was a big deal.

BULL: Trying to think of an equivalent in American sport, I suppose it would be a bit like a basketballer scoring 250, 300 points in a game - something like that.

MCEVERS: Pranav Dhanawade, the 15-year-old who broke the record, is the son of a rickshaw driver, and he says he wants to play professionally. Andy Bull says breaking the record in a school match against a much younger team doesn't guarantee he'll get a shot at the pros.

CORNISH: Still, today, the Times of India is calling Dhanawade Mumbai's boy wonder. And Bull says regardless, he's definitely won a place in cricket history. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.