Record! Smriti Mandhana creates history, becomes first Indian woman cricketer to … | Cricket News
Indian star batter Smriti Mandhana created history during the first Women’s T20I match against Sri Lanka in Visakhapatnam on Sunday. The left-handed opener achieved a major milestone and entered an elite list in women’s T20 international cricket.Mandhana became the first Indian woman cricketer to score more than 4,000 runs in T20Is. This is a huge achievement for Indian cricket.
Overall, she is only the second woman in the world to reach this landmark. New Zealand legend Suzie Bates is the only other player to do so and currently has 4,716 runs in the format.What makes Mandhana’s record even more special is the speed at which she achieved it. She reached the 4,000-run mark in just 3,227 balls, which is faster than Suzie Bates, who took 3,675 balls to get there. This shows how consistent and attacking Mandhana has been over the years in T20 cricket.In the match against Sri Lanka, Mandhana scored 25 runs off 25 balls. She was dismissed in the ninth over while chasing a target of 122 runs. Even though her innings was short, it was enough for her to reach the historic milestone. This was also her first international appearance since India’s famous win in the ODI World Cup final last month, where they defeated South Africa to lift their maiden title.Earlier in the match, the Indian bowlers delivered a disciplined performance and restricted Sri Lanka to 121 runs for six wickets. The Sri Lankan batters struggled to take advantage of loose deliveries and failed to build strong partnerships.Opener Vishmi Gunaratne was the top scorer for Sri Lanka with 39 runs off 43 balls. Hasini Perera and Harshitha Samarawickrama also contributed with scores of 20 and 21 respectively. Sri Lanka captain Chamari Athapaththu started aggressively but was dismissed by young pacer Kranti Gaud, giving India an early breakthrough.India’s bowlers kept things tight in the middle overs despite the presence of dew, which made gripping the ball difficult. Deepti Sharma bowled economically, while debutant Vaishnavi Sharma impressed everyone with a calm and controlled spell and gave away very few runs.
