Birth of a Cricketing Star
A few months back Pranav Dhanawade, a school boy in Mumbai has set a record in itself, when he became the first cricketer to score 1000 runs in a single innings and made the world look at the star of a different horizon.
Ritwik Sinha, though didn’t made any such astonishing record like Pranav, but the Kolkata school boy, who has appeared for his Class X Board exams, created quite a stir in the local cricketing circle, when he scored 383 out of 166 balls for Tirthapati Institution, in a Mayor’s Cup match against The Park Institution in the city.
What makes Ritwik different and deserve a story to be told, is his dreams of making it big in cricket someday in spite of odds in his life, his determination and will power to achieve the dream with whatever little resources he have. The journey has not been easy though, but the boy has marked, it was in defiance of the hardships that the young boy faces in his day-to-day life.
The boy who stays in a one-room home at Hazra in the heart of the city along with his parents. His father Ashish Kumar Sinha is a driver by profession and his mother is associated with an NGO. The hardship of his journey are reflected on the fade out colors of his four walls house and the determination to hit 48 fours and 26 sixes too draw its inspiration from hardship the boy is living in. As most of the inspiring stories in India goes Ritwik didn’t even have his own gloves and bat, rather he made his own record by borrowing this from his fellow players.
Still the boy who scored 383 has a regret of not getting to score 400. But a regret is sometimes good as it keeps the hunger up, so that next time he can achieve more than what he has achieve so far, as it is also interesting that before making this record of short, he has never scored a century in such competitive cricket before.
“My previous best was 78… Coming in at the fall of the first wicket, I never thought I would score so many runs. When I reached hundred, I thought I had scored enough… But my schoolteachers egged me on… Their inspiration helped me to carry on,” Ritwik said.
Just four balls were left in the innings and I wanted to get those runs. But then that cost me my wicket,” he added. Asked about his idol in cricket, Ritwik promptly replied: “Sachin Tendulkar… He is such a great cricketer.” Among the present lot, he likes Rohit Sharma. “He belongs to a different class… I enjoy watching him bat.”
Ritwik enjoys bowling right-arm medium pace and has no plans to concentrate just on his batting after Monday. Just like he plans to carry on with his academics and cricket simultaneously, provide he can overcome the financial hurdles.
Tirthapati Institution scored 500 for eight in 45 overs. They won by 414 runs as Park Institution was all out for just 86. Though the match has ended but this is a beginning for Ritwik and the real struggle to reach the zenith of the cricketing career has just begun.
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