Just 15 years old and 6’5” tall, Mayank Kumar, a Class VIII student at St Mary’s English High School in Bistupur, has made it to the elite national basketball cradle.

He is the only cager from Jharkhand to be selected for the ACG NBA Jump Tryouts, India’s first national basketball scouting programme.

Mayank was among the 175 cagers short-listed for the fifth edition of ACG NBA Jump Tryouts held in Calcutta on February 22.

“Mayank was among the top 6 players who got the nod after the tryouts. He has been sent to NBA cradle in Indore to work out under experienced mentors in Indore,” Mayank’s coach Sajjad Ahmad Khan said.

The scouting programme will culminate with the ACG-NBA Jump Tryouts national finals in Noida in May, where select players short-listed from the tryouts will be further evaluated by the NBA’s international operations team and scouts from the NBA Academy in India, Khan said.

Top performers from the national finals will receive a full scholarship, besides an opportunity to train at the NBA cradle in the country. Based on the performance at the national finals, one top player will be selected to attend the NBA D-League National Tryouts in the US and will undergo training in the guidance of top mentors.

Khan, a mentor at St Mary’s English High School, said Mayank was a quick mover with a superb reflex. “His height is an added advantage. He is also very agile,” he added.

Olympian Harbhajan Singh, secretary of Jharkhand Basketball Association, said Mayank “has the potential of shining at the national and international level”.