12-year-old Sarfaraz does a Sachin

At a school tournament which brought Sachin Tendulkar [ Images ] into the limelight 21 years ago, a 12-year-old boy smashed a record 439 runs in a marathon innings that included an astonishing 56 boundaries.

Playing for Springfield Rizvi School, Sarfaraz Khan also struck 12 sixes in his knock spanning two days that came off 421 deliveries against the Indian Education Society in the Under-16 Inter-School Harris Shield Tournament.

As a 15-year-old, Tendulkar had caught the imagination of a nation with his 329-run knock in the same tournament in 1988 before making his international debut the next year.

With his energy-sapping innings, Sarfaraz, a sixth standard student, also wiped off the 23-year-old previous mark of the highest individual score in the tourney that stood at 422.

That knock came from Sanjeev Jadhav of Shardashram Vidyamandir, the school which Tendulkar represented two years later.