BEING cricket captain of Malvern College may have kick-started Tesco entrepreneur Lord MacLaurin's rise to the top, a new survey has found.

In his adult career Ian MacLaurin, aged 67, turned Tesco into the country's leading supermarket - but it all started at school, according to pollsters MORI.

The organisation interviewed 105 business leaders, and found that 70 per cent had been school prefects, and half had captained their school sports teams. More than a third had been head or deputy head boy, and the vast majority had held at least two leadership roles.

The head of DDI consultancy, which commissioned the research, said: "Those charismatic characters we all knew at school who seemed able to pick almost anything up and become good at it are running our biggest companies today."

Another schoolboy achiever interviewed was Michael McLintock, 43, chief executive of fund management group M&G, who was head of school and captain of cricket at Malvern College.

But anyone whose schooldays did not pass in a blaze of glory can take comfort from the later achievements of Virgin entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, who dropped out of Stowe school with a lacklustre academic record, aged 16.

The late Sir James Goldsmith did not shine at school either, telling teachers he did not need to learn to read, "because when I grow up I'm going to be a millionaire and hire someone to read for me".