South Africa’s Jorich van Schalkwyk etched his name into the record books on Friday, July 25, as he became the first player to score a double-century in a Youth ODI. The milestone came during a match against Zimbabwe, where the South Africa Under-19 batter produced a commanding knock to lead his team to a massive total.
Van Schalkwyk scored 215 runs from just 153 balls in a dominant display that featured 19 fours and six sixes. His performance powered South Africa to a total of 385 runs, which is now their highest team score in Youth ODI history.
The achievement was all the more dramatic as it came just days after India’s Vaibhav Suryavanshi had expressed his ambition to reach the 200-run mark in youth cricket. Inspired by Shubman Gill’s recent century at Edgbaston, Suryavanshi fell short, while van Schalkwyk quietly got the job done.
This was van Schalkwyk’s second major innings in just three days. Earlier, he had scored an unbeaten 164 against Bangladesh Under-19 in Benoni. On that occasion, he looked well on course for a double-century but was denied by bad light, as South Africa secured a win by 14 runs via the Duckworth-Lewis method.
