Ashock Winner!

Anand Ashok, the 20-year-old Cambridge University batsman, is the 2009 winner of the Walter Lawrence Trophy award for the highest-scoring batsman from the six MCC Universities. His unbeaten 164, which included 20 fours, scored against Oxford University in the MCC Universities Championship match at Fenner’s on June 21, is the highest score in an innings played against one of the other five University Centres of Cricketing Excellence or against one of the first-class counties this season.

Ashok, who was born in Hyderabad, India, and is studying chemical engineering, will become the fourth recipient of a silver medallion and prize of £1,000 at the end-of-season lunch in The Long Room at Lord’s when the main trophy, for the fastest hundred in terms of balls faced, is presented.

Vikram Solanki, the 33-year-old Worcestershire captain, still leads the field in the challenge for the 2009 Walter Lawrence Trophy with his storming 47-ball hundred scored against Glamorgan in the Twenty20-Cup match at New Road, Worcester on June 24. The fastest first-class hundred of the season so far was scored by Somerset’s Peter Trego, who hit a sizzling century off 54 balls, including 6 fours and 9 sixes, against Yorkshire at Taunton on July 3. Trego currently shares the joint runner-up slot with Leicestershire’s Jim Allenby.