Nepal batsman surpasses Tendulkar's record to be youngest half-centurion

Surpassing master blaster Sachin Tendulkar's record, Nepal teenage batsman Rohit Paudel has become the youngest cricketer to score a half-century in international cricket at the age of 16 years and 146 days.

Earlier, Tendulkar was holding the record of the youngest half-centurion having played an innings of 59 in a Test against Pakistan aged 16 years and 213 days, ICC reported.

Paudel also gets past Pakistan player Shahid Afridi's record of being the youngest batsman to score a half-century in the one-day format. Afridi had played a blistering centurion knock off 37 balls at the age of 16 years and 217 days in his maiden international innings against Sri Lanka.

This is not the first time the Nepalese cricketer has set new benchmarks in the game. Earlier, he had come very close to setting a world record when he made his international debut aged 15 years and 335 days in August 2018, making him the fourth-youngest man in history to do so.

So far, Paudel has played a total of three one-day matches scoring 70 runs with an average of 23.33.