Cricket fans Mumbai, a city that has nurtured batting greats such as Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin Tendulkar, are hailing a new star in the making.
An undefeated 357 by 15-year-old Rahul Tondulkar last week has fired the imagination of this cricket-crazy city, not least because of the similarity in name to cricket's record holder for Test centuries.
Tondulkar's effort enabled his school team to declare at an imposing 621-3, and local journalists were quick to recall the 1988 exploits of a teenage Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli, who both hit triple centuries in the same Harris Shield competition.
Tendulkar and Kambli put on a record 664 runs for the third wicket for Shardashram against St. Xavier's. Tendulkar went on to make his Test debut as a cherub-faced 16-year-old the following year, and Kambli made his one-day debut in 1991.
Following Rahul's exploits, a national daily carried a front-page story in its Mumbai edition headlined "This one's named Tondulkar!'
But Tendulkar cautioned people against putting too much pressure on the schoolboy. "Rahul is very young. Don't pressurise him. Leave him alone, let him enjoy his game," he told reporters last week.
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