This is Smriti Mandhana’s moment of magic, both with bat and as skipper

Every cricket-loving person who has ever held a bat or a ball in their hand has dreamt of this moment. The moment when the world not just takes notice of them, and witnesses their becoming. 

Very few can translate that dream into reality. At the international level, the standards of the game and athletic performance are so high that a rare few get to experience the feeling of 'Hello world, This is me, and I’m here to make a mark.'

Potential and talent can both be a mirage or an oasis. Only performance can help anyone make that distinction. 

Smriti Mandhana is the kind of batter for whom this moment was predicted to happen just a few years after she held the cricket bat after looking at her brother. A double century in domestic cricket and an international debut while still a teenager proved her talent. 

Gradually, a Test half-century on debut in foreign conditions of Wormsley and a 90 on ODI World Cup debut in 2017 proved that Mandhana’s talent also had the potential to translate into something great. It was something that Indian women’s cricket needed badly as Mithali Raj was nearing the end of her career. India needed a batter who could hold the often fragile and tempestuous batting order and rack up solid totals. 

Along with Harmanpreet Kaur and Jemimah Rodrigues, Mandhana was touted as the future of Indian batting. However, in case of Kaur, she was soon to be in her 30s, and Rodrigues was still in her early 20s. Mandhana, meanwhile, not only had the right age but also batted at the top of the order, where she could dictate the pace, tempo, and outcome of India’s innings. 

This intense manifestation of fans and experts could have easily become a reality between 2017 and 2021 only if we lived in the Om Shanti Om universe created by Farah Khan. But sadly, we don’t live in that world. 

While Mandhana was superb in ODI cricket between 2018 and 2023, averaging 51.81 with a strike rate of 86.42, her T20I numbers in her almost decade-long career until then were mediocre at best for a batter of her repute and skills. 

While she still doesn’t have a T20I hundred, she was notoriously inconsistent when converting her solid starts in the format and used to throw it away trying to play a rash shot. That's why her T20I average (29.38) still hovers below 30 — the standard metric to judge the consistency of a batter in the shortest format. 

Her problems also proved to be predictable, as spin, especially off-spin, became her nemesis, and not only did she find it hard to score against that bowling type, but she also succumbed to it quite often {stats deals iska}. Moreover, even against pace, her preferred mode of operation, she was guilty of going extra hard on many occasions. 

While she was still one of India’s best and most reliable batters during this period, her performances were still not congruent with the well-deserved expectations generated by her gracious batting display. 

The WPL which changed Mandhana

It was clear that while some of her batting issues were related to skill and shot selection, the core of her problem was mentality-related. And that changed after she led Royal Challengers Bengaluru for the first time in the inaugural Women’s Premier League season. That season in 2023 was an unmitigated disaster for Mandhana (both with the bat and as a leader). 

However, between that season and the second one, something changed about the way she thought of her own game, its importance, and also her leadership. The fan demand met its supply in 2024, and Mandhana summed up that moment with a mic drop after RCB lifted their first ever trophy that year. 

It’s not E Saala Cup Namde.

It’s E Saala Cup Namdu.

As it was clear by then, it wasn’t just the famous adage that Mandhana altered. She made some modifications to her batting as well 

So what changed?

The efficacy of batting techniques depends on how compact, symmetrical, and synchronised every aspect of a batter’s technique has to be. And it is this togetherness and symmetry that insinuates a sense of aesthetics in our heads. 

Mandhana looks like an absolute goddess when she plays on the offside. Maybe this god syndrome makes her throw her wickets often as she looks to thrash the mere mortals bowling at her. And when she looks to thrash, all that elegance you associate with her batting disappears like camphor under heat.

Maybe that’s why she didn’t have a single hundred in the 35 ODIs she had played in India before the game against South Africa at the Chinnaswamy in Bengaluru. The lack of pace in Indian pitches becomes her foe, and her weaker game against spin is also exposed. That’s when you see her play expansive drives, wild slogs, and charging down the track to hit the tweakers away. 

Mandhana cut down on risks and started playing almost everything close to her body, under her eyes. That same symmetry and synchronisation, which add aesthetics to her batting, allowed her to see through tricky phases now. 

Also read - It’s Smriti Mandhana’s queendom, and we are just living in it

Did it show in the numbers?

You bet it did! 

Our statistician, Dhanush Lavanya, sent me the list of some of the records she thrashed this year:

> Most runs in a calendar year in Women’s internationals 

> Most 50-plus scores in a calendar year in Women’s internationals (16)

> Joint most hundreds in a calendar year in women’s internationals (5)

> Most runs in a calendar year in T20Is (yup, her T20 game is much improved now)

> Most centuries in a calendar year in Women’s ODIs (4)

> Most centuries by an Indian woman in ODIs (9)

While all these records are a function of her performances, her rise in the last year or so can’t just be summed up by that. 

In 2024, she averaged 193 and struck at 103 against off-spin in ODIs. When India won, she averaged 74.5 with the bat compared to 30.2 when they lost. She changed the tempo of her T20I batting and, as a result, also hit the most sixes in powerplay in 2024. 

Moreover, her innings construction in both formats reached the levels fans once expected of her. While you can see her conversion rate mirroring that of ODI greats, her T20 improvement is even more remarkable. In 2024, she struck at 112.8 in her first 15 deliveries, upped it to almost 140 between deliveries 16-30 and in the next 15, took it closer to 150. 

Finally, Mandhana was scoring like she was always meant to. Mandhana didn’t only find her peak in 2024. It also became her becoming, her “Hello world, THIS IS ME” moment. 

With Harmanpreet being on the wrong side of 30, and Mandhana already having captained India in games here and there, it is only a matter of time before she becomes the full-time captain. 

Brand Mandhana, which is now characterised by her empathetic style and backing of domestic talents in the WPL, can do the same wonders for the Women in Blue. After all, that brand isn’t just hype and PR now. It has the substance of runs behind it. 

With stats input by Dhanush Lavanya