Batsman Sam Cassidy has a bright future in the sport. Photo / Warren Buckland
Batsman Sam Cassidy has a bright future in the sport. Photo / Warren Buckland
If you walk past Lindisfarne College's cricket field this summer consider wearing a helmet.
The Hastings school's 1st XI boasts its own master blaster in no.3 batsman Sam Cassidy - who scored 236 not outoff 139 balls last Friday including 11 sixes.
While the 50-over match was a pre-season game against Whanganui Collegiate 1st XI, it has officially gone down as a school record.
The previous record (205 runs) at the Hastings school was set by current Hawke's Bay men's player Dominic Thompson.
Cassidy, 17, has now scored four centuries for his high school and will tell you he is in the form of his life after cracking 200 for the first time.
"And my coach kept telling me about it," he said. "I got a clap when I reached it."
He said by the time the innings was over, the achievement had only just started to sink in.
"I was quite tired at the time and it did not really hit me until after."
He reached his 100 with few, if any, mistakes but was dropped a handful of times on his way to 236 - while blasting the ball around the park.
Sam Cassidy is turning plenty of heads in school cricket. Photo / Warren Buckland
"It got quite frustrating after the drops ... I just tried to block it out."
Cassidy, whose favourite player is Kane Williamson, said his focus this season was to help the school win as many trophies as possible.
The Central Districts' age group representative also said he wanted to see how far he could go in the game in the future.
Lindisfarne won the match on Friday by 237 runs. However, the two sides played again the following day and Lindisfarne just scraped a win with Cassidy sitting out for a rest.