At just 14 years of age, he smashed 221 in a senior game, and set a record that might never be broken in the President’s Cup grade given some of the regulations of the competition.

Opening the batting for St Pat’s Old Boys Blue on Saturday against their clubmates St Pat’s Old Boys Gold at Jack Arrow Oval, Mitchell was simply unstoppable.

He didn’t offer a chance until he was on about 180, and his team finished their innings on 6-391 before going on to wrap up the match on Sunday.

Though it is hard to tell in some parts of a cramped scorecard, he hit around 26 fours to go with his five sixes.

Because President’s Cup requires senior players to retire at 100 before they are allowed to return to the crease at the fall of the penultimate wicket, and few if any players of Mitchell’s age will be likely to replicate such an effort, his record is likely to stand for a long, long time.

It also puts him alongside the likes of Western Zone star Jameel Qureshi, Sydney Uni first-grader Max Hope, big-hitting ex-Bushranger Jason Rae and ORC third grade cow corner specialist Aaron Taylor as players to knock up a double-ton in Bathurst in recent times.

It is elite company.

“I think I was out there for about four-and-a-half hours. It was easily the longest I’ve batted,” the quietly spoken Western under 14s representative said.

“I’ve hit two hundreds before, one for district and another for the [St Stanislaus’ College] Berg Shield team. This was the first one as a senior, though.

“I was hitting it pretty well and got to 100 and then I just had a goal of trying to get to 150 maybe. I kept batting as normally as I could up until then, but once I reached that mark I began to get a bit tired and hit it in the air a fair bit.

“It is a pretty good feeling to make that sort of score,” he added in a rather grand understatement. 

Mitchell was involved in two century stands. The first was with the experienced Matt Chirgwin (57), who has been part of some massive first grade efforts in the past, the duo putting on 102 for the first wicket.

He then got the chance to combine with his under 14s district captain Sam Hall (50) for a 129-run third wicket partnership.

While there is no definitive count on how many balls he faced, given that he was at the crease for 66 overs – a feat in itself – a decent guess would put the balls faced at somewhere around the 200-mark.

It was an amazing effort for a player of that age to do what he did.

His training played a major part in it, according to the youngster himself.

“I’ve done a lot of training with Greg Griffith for my bowling and Garth Dean for my batting. Sometimes Garth will have me face 500 balls from the bowling machine in a session, so that is obviously pretty good for my concentration,” he said.

“They have helped me heaps. I have been more of an all-rounder for most of my cricket and still open the bowling in most of my teams, but I’ve done a lot of work on my batting.

“I’ve spoken with some of the guys at the club about maybe playing second grade, but I like President’s Cup. The families involved in our team are all pretty close and the Pat’s Gold guys were awesome and all very friendly and enthusiastic about it.”

His district coach and Pat’s player Shane Broes was delighted to see the fruits of Mitchell’s hard work.

“It is an awesome effort for a player of that age and will probably stand as a record in that grade for a long time to come,” he said.

“I didn’t get to see it, but from what I’ve been told he played a lot in the vee between mid-on and mid-off during that first 150 runs. 

“Like any player of that age, Ben’s capable of having little brain explosions sometimes when he’s set at the crease, but to play an innings like that shows just how much he’s worked. It is a pretty special thing to do.”