Repton’s Rising Star

Nitish Kumar is the winner of this year’s Walter Lawrence Schools Award, introduced in 2011, for the highest score by a school batsman against MCC, who play over 280 schools in their busy season of out-matches.

Chasing an MCC total of 236-5 off 50 overs on May 7, Nitish made a scintillating, unbeaten 154 for Repton School, to see his side romp to victory by 8 wickets. His innings, which came off just 102 balls and included 22 fours and 1 six, was described by an MCC member, who now scores for MCC, as the highest and fastest century against the club by a schoolboy that he could remember in over 500 out-matches.

Nitish’s school season run-total of 909 featured three hundreds, while he also took 34 wickets, including 8 for 11 against Free Foresters, the best bowling figures in UK schools cricket this year.

Now 19, Nitish is a Canadian International cricketer, who became the youngest player to debut for his country in a first-class match when he played in an ICC Intercontinental Cup fixture against Kenya in 2009. He subsequently became the second youngest One-Day International player in 2010 at the age of 15 years and 273 days, only eclipsed by Pakistan’s Hasan Raza in 1996. Following this year’s school season he returned to Canada and scored his maiden first-class hundred against UAE in August.

Nitish, who plans to study at one of the MCC Universities in 2014, will receive a special medallion and a Gray-Nicolls cricket bat at the Walter Lawrence Trophy presentation dinner in The Long Room at Lord’s on October 15.

The quartet of Walter Lawrence Trophy awards, supported by Veuve Clicquot, encompass four distinct areas of the game: the Walter Lawrence Trophy, for the fastest century of the season; the MCC Universities award for the highest score by a batsman from the six MCC Universities against the first-class counties or in the MCCU Championship; The Walter Lawrence Women’s Award for the batsman who makes the highest individual score in a season from the ECB Women’s County Championship, the ECB Women’s County T20 Cup and all England Women’s matches played on home soil, and, finally, the Walter Lawrence Schools Award for the highest score by a school batsman against MCC.