Save! Smriti Mandhana creates history and becomes the first Indian female cricketer to… | Cricket News
India’s star batter Smriti Mandhana created history in the first women’s T20I match against Sri Lanka in Visakhapatnam on Sunday. The left-handed opener has achieved a milestone and entered the elite list of women’s international T20 cricket.Mandhana became the first Indian women cricketer to score over 4,000 runs in T20Is. This is a huge achievement for Indian cricket.
In total, she is only the second woman in the world to reach this milestone. New Zealand legend Suzie Bates is the only other player to do so and currently has 4,716 runs in this format.What makes Mandhana’s record even more special is how quickly 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 while chasing a target of 122 runs. Even though his innings were short, it was enough for him to reach the historic milestone. It was also her first international appearance since India’s famous victory in the ODI World Cup final last month, where they beat South Africa to win their maiden title.Earlier in the match, 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 establish strong partnerships.Opener Vishmi Gunaratne was the top scorer for Sri Lanka with 39 runs from 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.The Indian bowlers kept things tight in the middle despite the presence of dew, which made catching 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.
