Mohit Ahlawat's 300 off 72 balls against a local club in Delhi on Tuesday catapulted the 21-year-old to overnight stardom. With cricket aficionados scratching their heads in an attempt to make sense of the mind-boggling feat, Ahlawat soon made his intentions clear of wanting to play in the Indian Premier League (IPL). “Yes, I have put my name in the IPL auction, but I am not sure if this knock will make people notice me,” he said.
The youngster does have a point there. Will this knock make people sit up and take notice?
The more one tries to comprehend Ahlawat's exploits, the more one gets consumed by the fact it wouldn't have been possible without video game-like match conditions. The 'epic' knock was played at Lalita Park, a tiny 60m x 40m patch of land with a 25-yard boundary behind the batsman. The attack Ahlawat faced, too, comprised a mix of club and local bowlers.
Even Pranav Dhanawade, the 16-year-old who became a superstar after his extraterrestrial knock of 1000 runs in an inter-school match last year, had faced similar questions. It was reported that Pranav's feat was achieved on a ground with 25-yard-boundaries, against 10-year-old 'pacers', and with the help of as many as 25 dropped catches.
Now, there's not an iota of doubt in the fact that scoring a triple-century in a T20 game, or amassing 1000 runs in a single innings, is a superhuman effort. No matter what the opposition was like, or how favourable the conditions were, it takes a special effort for that kind of hitting.
However, the question still remains. What relevance should such knocks enjoy? Do these youngsters, as talented as they are, inspire any confidence on the back of these achievements?
And such are the times when one can't help but get reminded of Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli's iconic partnership of 664 runs during an inter-school match of high stakes (Harris Shield semi-final) in Mumbai. Not only did the duo take the world by storm then, they even backed it up by going on to represent the country a few years later.
Ahlawat might well bask in the glory at this point, but he knows better than anyone else that unless he goes on to achieve greater things in his career, his 300 off 72 balls in a T20 game will fade away from public memory and hardly stand the test of time.
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