With a gentle drive along the ground to long-on off Sri Lankan left-arm spinner Nimasha Meepage in the fourth T20I in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday, Smriti Mandhana entered a distinguished club. She became only the fourth player, and the second Indian, to reach 10,000 runs in women’s internationals — a list comprising India’s Mithali Raj (10,868 runs), New Zealand’s Suzie Bates (10,652) and England’s Charlotte Edwards (10,273).
While Mithali and Edwards have retired and Bates, 38, has reached the twilight of her journey, Smriti appears to be at just about the halfway stage of an exemplary career. She has hurtled to the mark in record time: 280 innings, quicker than Mithali (291), Edwards (308) and Bates (314). It is a resounding measure of Smriti’s ever-growing status as one of the greatest batters to have graced the women’s game.
In 2025, in particular, Smriti was an indomitable force. During the course of India’s triumphant World Cup campaign, where she had the distinction of being the tournament’s second-highest run-getter, she became the first woman to breach the 1,000-run mark in ODIs in a calendar year. She went on to end the year with a tally of 1,362 runs in 23 matches at an average of 61.9. Her strike-rate —109.92 — was better than ever before. She also racked up five hundreds in the format during the year. One of these, against Australia in Delhi just prior to the World Cup, came off merely 50 deliveries as India came ever so close to chasing down 413. It was the second-fastest hundred in the history of women’s ODIs, behind Meg Lanning’s 45-ball blitzkrieg against New Zealand in 2012, and the fastest by an Indian — man or woman.
Smriti during a training session.
| Photo Credit:
K.R. DEEPAK
In the T20I scheme of things, too, Smriti’s stature has risen. In June, she plundered the English attack for a 62-ball 112 in Nottingham, becoming the first Indian woman to hit centuries in all three formats.
Against the Sri Lankans on Sunday, Smriti’s knock of 80 provided the foundation for India’s total of 221 for two in 20 overs. After exercising a bit of restraint in comparison to the dynamic Shafali Verma early on in an opening partnership of 162, a record for the Women in Blue for any wicket, the vice-captain duly accelerated in the middle phase to power her team to its highest-ever total in T20Is. Following lean scores of 25, 14 and 1 for the ace batter from Maharashtra in the first three games of the T20I series, this was Smriti back in familiar territory.
“After playing a lot of ODI cricket this year, it was tough to get into T20 cricket. It was mentally a little different. Happy that I contributed better today,” Smriti reflected at the post-match presentation ceremony.
Elegance personified
It is worth emphasising in Smriti’s case that the quality of the run-making tends to be just as impressive as the quantity. As apparent from her ability to caress silken drives through the off-side, she is blessed with all the quintessential traits of a languid left-hand batter. After Sunday’s T20I, Sri Lanka coach Rumesh Ratnayake even drew parallels between Smriti and former England captain David Gower, who enthralled audiences in the 1980s with the regal grace of his strokeplay.
However, Smriti hasn’t relied on just her natural attributes to navigate the cut-throat cauldron of international cricket. Her precocious talent was a given once she made her debut for India in 2013 as a 16-year-old, but if she is continuing to push the boundaries of excellence more than a decade later, it is fundamentally because of her indefatigable desire to fine-tune her game.
Smriti will be leading RCB in the forthcoming WPL.
| Photo Credit:
K. MURALI KUMAR
“It’s never the case that I’ve done it before. You’ve to start on zero in every game. What you have done in the last match or previous series isn’t important,”Smriti told bcci.tv after scaling 10,000 runs on Sunday. “Internal expectations are different in every format. In T20s, you can’t be extremely hard on yourself after getting out. You’re playing at a pace where it will come off on some days and won’t on some other days. I’m really tough on myself in ODIs and Tests. If I get out, it feels like a sin for me.”
On-side game
According to W.V. Raman, who was head coach of the Indian women’s team from 2018 to 2021, Smriti has developed her on-side range in recent times. It has made her a lot harder to contain, and perhaps acted as the catalyst for the prolific year she has just had.
“She has expanded on her repertoire of shot-making and that’s the reason she has churned out runs in such a consistent manner,” Raman told The Hindu. “She was making a lot of people feel that she was capable of doing more about two, three seasons ago. And in the last couple of years, she’s obviously stepped up and the consistency with which she has got runs has been remarkable.
“She has worked out the shots to play on the on-side between the arc of square leg to long-on. That was one area that she was perhaps not really as good as she is now. She was definitely very fluent through the off-side always and she could always play behind square on the onside. But that particular area between front of square and long-on, she has started playing a lot more shots now,” the former Indian opener elaborated.
Smriti In action during the fourth T20I in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday.
| Photo Credit:
NIRMAL HARINDRAN
Among the strokes she has particularly worked on, said Smriti’s personal coach Anant Tambavekar, is the slog sweep against spin.
“She used to play the sweep earlier too, but now she is a lot more clinical with that stroke. In general, she carries greater confidence now that she can clear the boundary at any stage of the innings,” Tambavekar noted.
The confidence has also stemmed from the rigorous training routine that Smriti has put herself through to become a fitter and stronger athlete. Over the past year or so, her willingness to go the extra mile has resulted in her teaming up with Srikanth Varma Madapalli, a Hyderabad-based strength and conditioning coach who was notably badminton star P.V. Sindhu’s personal trainer in the past.
“She always had the ability to play big shots. The difference now is that she is able to sustain her big hitting for a longer duration, because she’s become stronger by way of improving her fitness. That’s a better way of putting it,” said Raman.
As Smriti heads into 2026, on the back of a hugely fulfilling 12 months on the field, can the star opener continue to push the envelope?
“In my view, she has just about reached the base of her peak,” Raman opined. “She has worked her cricket out. She has also realised what kind of training she needs to do. And she has seen what that has fetched her. She’s still got quite a lot of mountains that she can climb.”
Focus on WPL
Smriti’s focus will now turn to the fourth edition of the Women’s Premier League beginning on January 9. Though she led Royal Challengers Bengaluru to the title in the second season in 2024, her own performances with the bat in the marquee T20 league haven’t necessarily matched up to her high standards yet. It should only be a matter of time before Smriti course-corrects on this front too.
Published – December 31, 2025 11:47 pm IST
