Suitable boys for Indian cricket

By John Cheeran
Where else on the earth the Great Indian Rope Trick can happen?
India is still the place for the unusuals.
Women are auctioned off (as it happened in Tamil Nadu a few days ago) and billions can watch cricket without any sense of guilt for wasted hours.
And schoolboys thrash record on the batting crease while men struggle to keep their wickets intact.
Such things can happen only in India.
Are these instances signs of greatness?
On November 15, openers Manoj Kumar and Mohammad Shaibaz Tumbi both scored triple centuries and put on 721 runs in Hyderabad as they batted through a full 40 overs in an under-13s inter-school limited-overs match.
The significance to their silly effort was that they surpassed a milestone achieved by Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli in 1988. Tendulkar and Kambli put on a record 664 runs for the third wicket for Shardashram against St Xavier's in the Harris Shield Schools Competition in Mumbai.
Tendulkar went on to make his Test debut as a 16-year-old in 1989 and Kambli made his one-day debut in 1991. The closest any Test batting duo came to going past the Tendulkar-Kambli record was when Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara added 624 for the third wicket against South Africa in Sri Lanka earlier this year.
Manoj scored 320 off 127 balls and Tumbi 324 off 116 balls for St Peter's School and they ran up the highest total, highest partnership and eventually the highest margin of victory (700 runs) in any class of the limited-overs game. A stunned St Phillip's School were bundled out for a paltry 21 in just seven overs.
Manoj's faced 120 balls but his innings included 46 fours, while Shaibaaz needed just 116 balls and hit 57 fours to batter the St Phillip's High School attack. Neither batsman was informed of the record during their mammoth partnership, which was put together in a single day, unlike the three days shared by Tendulkar and Kambli.
You rarely come across wild stories such as these from Australia and England or other parts of the cricketing world.
Do the Hyderabad boys are an answer to Dilip Vengsarkar's prayers for talent?
I advise restraint.
Quality of your runs depend on the quality of your opposition. Manoj's and Tumbi's rivals St Phillip's School could manage only 21 runs. Can you put those two innings totals together. 721 vs 21.
I cannot think of a worse mis-match than this in the history of cricket.
The media blaze in the wake of Hyderabad run-glut was unbelievable in India. The sad part is that these two boys will soon find this one innings a curse. Manoj and Tumbi are likely to play rest of their cricket in the shade of their 721. The label of being the boys who broke Tendulkar's record will not be taken off so easily and at this formative age such adulation and attention are hardly the right medicines.
May be they will prove me wrong and take Indian cricket to the heights that it deserves in a few years. I wish I would be alive to write those stories.