A school photograph featuring Sachin Tendulkar (second row from top, seventh from left) from 1979/80
• When South Africa lined up against England at Lord’s in 1960, five of their players had attended the same school. Trevor Goddard, Colin Wesley, Jon Fellows-Smith, Hugh Tayfield and Geoff Griffin were all former students of Durban High School.
• British schoolgirl Holly Colvin, who made her England Test debut at the age of 15, became, in 2008/09, the first overseas player to represent the New South Wales women’s team. A spinner, Colvin got straight A’s at school in 2006, winning The Daily Telegraph Female Pupil of the Year award.
• Whenever Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara made a Test match century, his mother would pay tribute to his former school principal. According to the batsman’s mum, it was his headmaster at Trinity College in Kandy, Leonard De Alwis, who realised his potential: “The boy showed talents in both cricket and tennis at school, and his mother was confused, but I advised her to encourage him to pursue cricket. I still follow his game and am proud of my pupil.”
• Pakistani opening batsman Nasir Jamshed was arrested in 2010 for cheating during a school examination. According to a senior police official, Nasir was caught “red-handed” while taking a secondary school English exam: “The invigilator at the examination centre immediately informed the police who have registered a case against Nasir for cheating under sections three and 420.”
Having scored 74 on his first-class debut as a 15-year schoolboy, the left-handed batsman made his one-day international debut in 2007/08.
• A call went out in India in 2011 for major cricket tournaments not to be scheduled when schools are conducting exams. On the eve of the World Cup, Rakesh Sachdeva from India’s Board of Secondary Education rued the timing of the competition: “Every year there is a cricket tournament, which is a huge distraction for the whole country. It really affects students’ academic performance. There is no academic atmosphere. We feel the timing is very difficult. It is unfair on the students. We can only counsel … they should not be wasting their time with cricket.”
• While playing Test cricket for Australia, opening batsman Paul Sheahan also worked for the Victorian Education Department. With a Bachelor of Science and a Diploma of Education from the University of Melbourne, Sheahan later rose to the rank of headmaster at Geelong College and Melbourne Grammar School.
• When Indian fast bowler Ishant Sharma made his name in the national team in 2008, a former teacher revealed how she had to constantly remove him from the classroom. Babita Mann, a teacher at the Ganga International School, recalled how she frequently had to bring a young Ishant into line by throwing him out of class: “I was sick of his low attendance. Even if Ishant came, I asked him to stand out. It was not fair on the students who attended regularly. I remember scolding him every day and he would always give me the excuse that he was out playing cricket.”
• Reflecting on the 40th birthday of Sachin Tendulkar in 2013, another Indian legend reminisced on how a 17-year-old Tendulkar took along his school books on his first tour of England in 1990. Kapil Dev revealed he’d been advised to look after the young Tendulkar and roomed with him during the tour: “On that first tour, he was carrying his school books to study in tenth grade. He was shy and was just a normal kid.”
A school photograph featuring Sachin Tendulkar (second row from top, seventh from left) from 1979/80
• In 2014, the Maharashtra government announced it was including a chapter on Sachin Tendulkar in the school syllabus. Sunil Gavaskar and Chandu Borde had previously been included in school textbooks in the state.
• After making a single first-class appearance for Cambridge in 1939, Christopher Newton-Thompson opened a school in Swaziland. One of its students was future British actor Richard E. Grant, who featured scenes of cricket in his 2005 film Wah-Wah.
• A special moment in the history of the Millfield School in Somerset took place on 12 May 2013 when four of its former pupils all scored first-class centuries. After both making ducks in the first innings in a match at Worcester, Surrey’s Rory Hamilton-Brown then scored 115 and Tom Maynard 143 in a fifth-wicket stand of 225. Elsewhere, West Indian Kieran Powell made 108 against the England Lions at Northampton, while Wes Durston hit 121 for Derbyshire versus Hampshire at Southampton. Another former student just missed out on three figures on the same day, with Craig Kieswetter left unbeaten on 96 for Somerset against Durham at Chester-le-Street.
• Ryan Carters, who made his first-class debut for Victoria in 2010/11, was a model student at school, crowned dux of Radford College in Canberra. He finished his high school studies as one of the top students in the city gaining a university admissions score of 99.95, the equal second-best in the ACT. Studying English, maths, physics and chemistry at school, Carters went on to juggle a degree at Sydney University with first-class cricket for New South Wales.
• In 2008, the city of New York became the first US school district to introduce cricket as a sport in public high schools. The cricket commissioner of the Public Schools Athletic League conceded that cricket would never replace football or basketball but hoped that it might catch on.
• Two of the USA’s most prestigious universities contested their first-ever cricket match in 2012. Played under floodlights, Harvard defeated Yale in a Twenty20 match by 175 runs.