Fish, chips... & centuries!
How an exchange trip to England gave India’s new Tendulkar food for thought
A HUGE smile radiates from the face of Prithvi Shaw when asked what he remembers most fondly from his time as a school boy in the north west of England.
‘Fish and chips,’ he chuckles. ‘I enjoyed that quite a lot because that was the only food I liked over here.’
Lucy Pearson, head of Cheadle Hulme School, remembers the dietary issue well. ‘To Prithvi, the food was really quite bland. I was having a conversation with him one day in the canteen and he pointed at a jacket potato and demanded with incredulity: “What’s that?” ’
Meals at the Milligan household where Shaw lodged six years ago — Ian Milligan is chairman of Bramhall Cricket Club just down the road from the school — were given spicy tweaks. And if all else failed, fish and chips proved a failsafe.
So how did the teenage batsman called into India’ s Test squad this week — the new Sachin Tendulkar according to revered judges including Mark Waugh — end up facing such culinary challenges during the final term at an independent school on the edge of Manchester in 2012?
The educational experience was the brainchild of friends Dr Samir Pathak and John Wilson, the school’s head of modern languages. In the midst of England’s 4-0 Test whitewashing of India in 2011, they agreed that young Indian cricketers would benefit from experiencing English conditions and began setting up the Cricket Beyond Boundaries placement scheme.
Before long, the pair were destined for the subcontinent to talent spot at Dilip Vengsarkar’s academies. Shaw immediately caught the eye. ‘He was the torch bearer for us,’ adds Pearson, twice England’s women’s cricketer of the year.
Shaw tells The Mail On Sunday: ‘They saw me in Mumbai batting and asked me to come here to play. I was 12, and it was a good experience. The weather was different from India, the wickets were different from India, and the game planning of English players, the strategies and tactics were new to me. Because of all of them I now know English conditions perfectly.’ Shaw was a Year 7 pupil when he represented the Cheadle Hulme first XI. He scored more than 1,400 runs during his four-month stay and took in excess of 60 wickets with his off-spin. The following November, the month in which he turned 14, he broke Tendulkar’ s record score in the Harris Shield, the Mumbai schools competition, with an innings of 546.
‘At that tender age his cricket awareness was quite phenomenal. He was a complete diddy lined up alongside sixth- form boys, but he has always had this deep-rooted assurance about his own game,’ Pearson continues.
‘To see him for the first time was to realise that this was a boy destined for greatness. Here was a 12-year-old playing against 18year-olds and you just couldn’t help admire his skill. Age, quite simply, was irrelevant.
‘To see him go on and lift the World Cup for India earlier this year was something special. This school is all about pride in our pupils’ achievements and there is a real sense of that in Prithvi.’
The pressure of expectation in India can be crippling. But Shaw refers to following Virat Kohli ( left) in captaining the India Under-19 team to global glory in New Zealand as ‘the next step’. Now, having starred in both India A’s 50-over and four-day squads this summer, a full international bow is within touching distance.
Some of this former classmates were among the spectators as the 18-year-old hit the first two limited-overs hundreds of his career and one of the seven he has already made in 14 first-class appearances.
Now, having been drafted into India’s squad along with Hanuma Vihari for the Tests in Southampton and the Oval — after Murali Vijay was axed — he is an injury or illness away from featuring in front of much larger crowds.
The comparisons with Tendulkar extend beyond the fact that they both stand 5ft 5in tall. Earlier this year, Shaw became the Indian Premier League’s youngest ever opener. He made hundreds on debut in both the Ranji and Duleep Trophies, India’s first-class competitions. Like Tendulkar, he has benefited from having the calming influence of Rahul Dravid close at hand ( Dravid was Under- 19 coach during Shaw’s captaincy tenure and was in charge of the India A team that won the recent one-day triangular here).
Very soon, it seems, the cricket world will get to see the talents that have made him such a big fish and rendered opponents small fry.