India’s 18-year-old Prithvi Shaw was the Player of the Match on Test debut last week during the first Test against West Indies in Rajkot.
On Sunday, Shaw was named the Player of the Series for his 237 runs in three innings in the two-Test series, which India won 2-0.
After Shaw was handed the award followed by presenter Sanjay Manjrekar interviewing the winning captain Virat Kohli, what happened next will be cherished for a really long time in Indian cricket.
Shaw kicked-off his Test career in style in India’s first Test against West Indies in Rajkot last week.
The 18-year-old smashed a spectacular hundred on debut and became only the 15th Indian Test batsman to do so.
Shaw also had become India’s only teenage to score a half-century on Test debut. However, Shaw became the third Test debutant opener from Mumbai to score a fifty in his first innings. KC Ibrahim (1948-49) and Sunil Gavaskar (1970-71) were the others.
Overall, Shaw was the fifth youngest opener to score a half-century in his maiden Test innings after 17y Hanif Mohammad, Stollmeyer, Tamim Iqbal and Imran Farhat.
During the final innings of the second Test on Day three, Shaw took a single on the second delivery of the 16th over and leveled the scores for India. However, his batting partner, KL Rahul failed to score a run in the next four balls.
That meant, Shaw returned to strike and he was one hit away from recording yet another history in his debut Test series.
West Indian Bishoo was with the ball, who bowled a bit wide and wasting no time, Shaw leaned forward and drilled it through covers for a boundary.
By doing so, Shaw (18y 339d) was the second youngest to hit the winning runs in a Test after Pat Cummins (18y 198d) against South Africa in Johannesburg in 2011.
