Shafali embraces Pratika after the latter’s ton.
| Photo Credit: BCCI

Smriti Mandhana of India and Shafali Verma of India during The Final of the DP World Women’s T20 Asia Cup 2026 between India and Sri Lanka at Dubai International Cricket Stadium, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on September 13, 2026.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

Smriti Mandhana plays a shot during the final cricket match against Srilanka at the Asian Games. File
| Photo Credit: MOORTHY RV

Smriti Mandhana in action during the final cricket match against Sri Lanka at the Asian Games in Japan.
| Photo Credit: R.V. Moorthy

Smriti Mandhana plays a shot during the second semifinal T20I cricket match between India’s women and Bangladesh’s women in the ongoing Asian Games 2026 on September 20, 2026
| Photo Credit: PTI

When Smriti Mandhana scored her 18th international century against Hong Kong at the Women’s T20 Asia Cup in Dubai on Thursday (September 3, 2026) — in just 57 balls — she had set a new record for scoring the highest number of centuries in women’s international cricket across all formats.

However, the century, which cemented India’s victory in the match and broke Australian Meg Lanning and South African Laura Wolvaardt’s jointly-held record of 17 international centuries, did not end Smriti’s record breaking spree.

By the time she was run out for 124, she had overtaken her former captain Mithali Raj’s to become the highest run-scorer in women’s international cricket. She had taken her career tally to 10,880 runs, 12 more than Mithali’s previously held record of 10,868 runs. Her score was also the highest in the history of the Women’s T20 Asia Cup, surpassing Chamari Athapaththu’s 119 not out from 2024.

Her seven sixes against Hong Kong took her career tally to 95, making her the leading six-hitter for India in women’s T20Is and the fourth-highest in the world. 

Those seven sixes were also the second-most by an Indian woman in a single T20I innings, behind Harmanpreet Kaur’s eight during her century against New Zealand. With her second T20I hundred, Smriti became the first Indian woman to score multiple centuries in the format. She also equalled Mithali’s record of 93 fifty-plus scores across international cricket

The pace

Mandhana’s century-making was a slow burn before it became a sprint. Her first hundred came in her 32nd international batting innings in 2016, but it took 115 more innings and five years to reach her fifth century. 

She needed another 92 more innings to get to 10, and then the sprint started. Just 18 innings separated her 10th and 14th centuries, nine more took her to 15, and only seven more to 17, when she equalled Meg and Laura’s record. Then there was a pause, before she broke their record in her 303rd international innings. Ten of her 18 centuries came within the last two years.

That acceleration becomes even more striking when placed alongside the other top five century-makers. Meg Lanning reached five hundreds in 70 innings and 10 in 123, just about half the number of 239 innings that Smriti took to score her tenth century. 

All the other four also crossed the milestone of ten centuries before their 200th innings. Laura Wolvaardt took 144 innings to reach five, but only 18 more to get to 10 and another 44 to reach 15. Suzie Bates reached five in 105 innings and 10 in 199, while Tammy Beaumont reached those marks in 88 and 181. Hayley Matthews reached her fifth century in 156 innings and her 10th in 189. But for Smriti, who was slower to cross the early milestones, the performance soared after she crossed her 200 innings. 

Where the hundreds came from

Of Smriti’s 18 centuries, 14 have come in ODIs, two in Tests and two in T20Is. That is striking given that she has played more T20Is than ODIs — 173 compared with 120, predominantly as the opening batter in both the formats. 

In ODIs, she has scored 5,411 runs and 14 hundreds. In 16 Test innings, she has two hundreds and averages 52.53. In 167 T20I innings, she has 4,681 runs. Across all three formats, she has 10,880 runs, 75 fifties and an average of 38.86, showing that her track record is built on consistency as much as several spectacular peaks. 

Moreover, it is the pace at which she has accumulated her runs that really sets her apart. Smriti’s 10,880 runs have come in 303 international batting innings — fewer than any of the other four players among the five leading run-scorers, all of whom except Stafanie Taylor are now retired from international cricket. 

Mithali needed 314 innings to make 10,868 runs, Stafanie 307 for 10,005, Charlotte Edwards 316 for 10,273 and Suzie Bates 352 for 10,740.

Her career international strike rate of 99.57 is another outlier. It is nearly 10 points higher than Suzie, the next fastest among the five, and more than 30 points higher than Mithali Raj. She had already become the fastest woman to reach 10,000 international runs, doing so in 281 innings. 

Batting average (38.86) is the only indicator where Smriti lags behind, but that too only against her compatriot and inspiration Mithali, who is far ahead than the other top scorers with an average of 46.64.  Smriti is in the same league as the others with only the former West Indies captain Stafanie holding a marginally higher batting average of 40.02.

A few years back, she had said that her mother taught her to persevere — “to go on till reaching the top”. She also said she wanted to be the best batter in the world. At just 30, she has now reached a rather literal version of that ambition, but as she said in the press conference after the Hong Kong match that “it is just the start”.  

devyanshi.b@thehindu.co.in

Published – September 05, 2026 02:28 pm IST

Smriti Mandhana. File picture
| Photo Credit: ICC via Getty Images

It was 25 years ago that Mark Butcher scored a monumental 173 not out in England’s successful chase against Australia in the Headingley Test. He scored seven other Test hundreds, some of them against the most fearsome attacks. He is now a popular commentator and sharp analyst of the game. Excerpts from Butcher’s exclusive interview with The Hindu at Lord’s:

Your comparison of Vaibhav Sooryavanshi with Garry Sobers earlier this year got a lot of attention. It was fascinating, how you proved, through the help of visuals, the similarities in the bat swing, hand speed…

I watched him make that 175 [off 80 balls] in the Under-19 World Cup final [against England at Harare]. I was struck by that incredible, long, high backlift, the huge follow-through, the complete circle almost where the bat finishes around, tapping him on the spine. You know, Sobers used to hit a lot of shots with his feet together. He would play full balls almost off the back foot. And Sooryavanshi can hit them like that too.

Even if his career ends up not reaching the expectations that other people have, which I think is very unlikely, he has still in the IPL done something that all of the greatest players up until now have never, ever done: none of them have managed to score at a strike-rate of 230, hit that many sixes, be that consistent in the entirety of the IPL. It is still one of the most remarkable things I have ever seen.

Today’s youngsters are exposed to T20 from the beginning, whereas when I was very young, it was Test matches. They grow up thinking about batting very much in a hyper aggressive mode. These younger guys can do things at their age that we wouldn’t have dreamt of at ours.

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Yes, even Sachin Tendulkar didn’t hit as many sixes, for all his genius. Sooryavanshi is a product of the T20 era of cricket.

Correct. So he will have to learn the game the other way around. He will have to learn how to bat time, to defend. In our generation, it was the opposite. We would have to spend a lot of time learning how to hit the ball.

How do you recall your masterpiece — 173 not out in 2001?

My main memory is about that summer, really. I wasn’t expecting to play Test cricket again. I got an opportunity and I played 42 Tests in a row. I had completely changed my game.

Your father helped, didn’t he?

That is right. The biggest thing I remember is the relationship I had with my dad in the winter of 2001. I called him and said, ‘Dad, I am hating playing cricket.’ Something that I had always loved. Now I was hating it. And I said to him — ‘Treat me as though I have never played the game before.’ So we went right back to the beginning. He really taught me how to hold the bat, how to stand, the whole thing. We changed my grip. We changed my stance. We changed my backlift. Everything. We went back to zero. Like I was five years old. And we worked like that for about three months. And then I luckily got back into the team. I had made a few runs playing for Surrey. A few injuries in the England camp before the Ashes started, and I got in.

How much does that knock, which came against Glenn McGrath, Shane Warne, Brett Lee and Jason Gillespie, mean to you?

Ah, it was huge. You wouldn’t be talking to me if it hadn’t been for that. And I wouldn’t be working in TV either. So that innings changed everything. It was the greatest day.

And how was the coach’s reaction?

I know my dad was in tears when [BBC] Test Match Special called him up.

The players you like to watch these days?

I actually love watching K.L. Rahul. I think he is a sensational player. Really classy. Harry Brook is fabulous to watch when he is in. Joe Root, too. And Travis Head — you can’t take your eyes off the screen when he is batting.

You have played against some of the greatest bowlers in history. Who were the most challenging among them?

Blimey! Curtly Ambrose. Him and Courtney Walsh. And then you had, obviously, Shane Warne. Glenn McGrath. Murali [Muttiah Muralitharan].

Among the Indians?

Harbhajan [Singh] and [Anil] Kumble, on those tracks.

And the batters you admired?

[Brian] Lara was sort of the king around about those times. Fellow left-hander, so I greatly admired him. Then the guys like [Ricky] Ponting, Sachin [Tendulkar], obviously. I remember applauding Ricky from second slip at the WACA, much to the annoyance of Nasser Hussain, who was standing next to me at slip. He glared at me. I was just standing there going, ‘Oh man, that’s good’. There were a lot of great players around, like the South Africans, Jacques Kallis and Graeme Smith.

Is there cause for concern about the future of Test cricket?

Yeah, of course, there is. What you would like is to have eight to ten teams who are competing on a level playing field. If only England, Australia and India are playing each other, the game is starting to eat itself, you know.

Eventually, one of the great things about all of the series that go around is that you are anticipating and you are excited about the idea about playing this team at this venue. But if it is the same three teams the whole time, it is not that exciting.

What has happened in the modern era is that the gap between the countries that have plenty of finances and the rest has got wider. The competition has perhaps thinned out a little bit in recent times. And that is a huge shame, that finances have meant that a lot of countries, the West Indies, being the most obvious example simply because of their dominance [in the past], have suffered.

South Africa are kind of hanging in there. They are still producing a lot of players and they still manage just about to keep enough of their most talented players to play Tests. But in places like Sri Lanka and the West Indies, they find it very difficult to keep their best players who disappear off to earn more money playing T20. And that is a problem for the world game.

The First Class game and the structures that produce Test Match cricketers are strong in some places and not very strong at all in others.

Your thoughts on Bazball?

I have been critical of it at times. In the game of cricket, the Test match is the game. And they tried to do something that was going to take the game to a different place. But Test match cricket kind of fought against it a little bit. Because when it came down to it, in the big games against the likes of India and Australia, it didn’t work. And so, Test match cricket is kind of greater than any idea that people might have around how you play it.

And Test cricket is the greatest form of sport.

It is. The sport itself dictates to you what is necessary. And if you push too hard, the game will bite you back. And that is what happened. There is as much pleasure to be taken from a really hard-fought draw sometimes as there is from smashing it all over the park.

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The women got to play a Test at Lord’s, finally.

This has come about because the world has decided, well, you know, this is a great game of cricket, right? Why would we want to stop 50% of the world’s population from enjoying and playing the sport that we think is a great sport? And so that opportunity is now there and what you are seeing is a product of that.

Players in the women’s game that you enjoy watching?

I like Smriti Mandhana’s batting. She is just an incredibly graceful player. So easy on the eye. Very, very lovely to watch. She plays pace and spin equally well. She reminds me of David Gower, in fact. Harmanpreet Kaur is very good to watch, too. And Jemimah Rodrigues is a fine technician.

Besides cricket, music is your other passion. And you had the opportunity of performing with Sarah Brightman, one of the greatest voices of our time.

It was good fun, singing some of Sarah’s favourite songs on live television. It was kind of nerve-racking, but it was good.

That day is still fresh in memory. Because that innings is fresh in memory.

The winter was setting in at Raipur. The Shaheed Veer Narayan Singh Stadium, some 20 kms away from the city, looked more imposing than usual as it was virtually empty. There were hardly any spectators for the Senior Women’s T20 Challenger Trophy back in 2022.

It was a pity that Yastika Bhatia’s unbeaten 99 for India-D against India-C was watched only by a few. It was a masterclass in T20 batting. She was technically correct, played proper cricketing shots, chose the right balls to hit, and struck at a rate of 162.

The only thing she got wrong was counting the balls: otherwise, she would have completed her century. She may have missed the hundred by just one run, but those who watched that innings may not have forgotten it in a hurry. It remains one of the very best in the domestic game over the last few years. Yastika, it was obvious, would go far.

She may have taken her time, but she has gone far. All the way to the Lord’s honours board, in fact. The 25-year-old became the first woman to reach there by scoring a Test century.

The hundred consisted of all those elements which the Raipur innings had: technique, lovely shots, and ability to choose the right balls to hit. Of course, the occasion was bigger. It was a Test match, that too a historic one — the first-ever women’s Test at cricket’s more revered venue. The bowling was much stronger: the Laurens — Bell and Filer — with their seam speciality, another quick in Issy Wong and spinners in Sophie Ecclestone and Mady Villiers.

Crucial performance

Yastika’s 113 helped India declare its second innings with the bowlers assured of four sessions in their bid to bundle England out. They needed only two and Indian women’s cricket recorded one of its greatest triumphs of all time — a Test win at Lord’s by 270 runs.

It was the greatest moment in Yastika’s professional life. “The best is yet to come,” she would say. But, this one will remain special for several reasons, and we are not just talking about the Lord’s honours board. This was her first-ever century for India. It came after a terrible ACL injury and the long, difficult rehabilitation process.

Shortly after the Test, in which she also kept wickets, Yastika looked back at that tough period. She was honest and spoke at length. Her face and eyes told what she had gone through. “I started from scratch after the injury,” said the southpaw. “For the first two months after the surgery, I took total rest. From there, I had to come back. All the muscles in my left leg had been lost in those two months. So after that, I had to start afresh.”

The rehabilitation stage began afterwards. “Each muscle you have to train for… the muscles around the knee,” she said. “And then slowly there would be progress. Not in one or two days, surely. It was very frustrating to miss out on big tournaments (including the ODI World Cup that India went on to win at home).”

Yastika, however, remained confident. “I had the belief in myself that I could come back from this injury,” she said. “The people around me also helped me keep a very positive frame of mind. I was able to do rehab one day at a time.”

What did she first do when she finally got to the ground at last? “I was keeping wickets. I just did catching practice, there was no batting; I was very happy. That day, I was like a little kid smiling the whole day. I was glad that I could keep after four months. Those moments are priceless; I felt the love of the game again. Whatever setbacks you have, how deep that setback is… the love for the game, the belief in yourself — those are very, very crucial,” she said. “That will help you to come out from rock bottom and rise once again.”

Support system

The top-order batter is grateful to those who stood by her during those difficult days. “A lot of people have helped me behind the scenes,” she said.

“My family — my mother, father and sister — they have been the biggest support. My coaches and trainers back home and also the support staff and teammates here in England… they have all backed me. And those at the BCCI Centre of Excellence (CoE), where I underwent the rehab… the surgeons, doctors who took care of my surgery. All of them played a crucial role. My comeback wouldn’t have been possible without them.”

Then there is a familiar name — Smriti Mandhana, the fellow stylish left-hander with whom Yastika shared a crucial second-wicket partnership in the second innings at Lord’s. Smriti, who had also gone through the trauma of an ACL injury, had some advice for her teammate.

“I had a conversation with Smriti. She just looked at me and said: ‘This is going to be a turning point in your career,’” Yastika recalled. “She said that because she had faced similar injuries or setbacks. She had learned so much about everything… little, little things in rehab and in cricket. It completely changed her. She said that my entire mindset, too, would change.

“She said: ‘Your game will go to a different level.’ She could sense that. We had a few chats during my rehab; the other players were at a camp. I was a little nervous about how things would go. But she said: ‘Keep doing your hard work. You are a sincere kid. You are a good human. Just keep working hard and your time will come one day.’”

That day did come. Smriti was there at Lord’s to watch it from the sidelines and had been with Yastika out in the middle for a large part of her innings.

It was lovely to watch both of them bat together. Smriti is among the most stylish batters in women’s cricket. Yastika, too, is elegant and can play gorgeous strokes.

And Yastika loves batting with Smriti. “You learn so much from her,” she said. “Her mindset is very good: she always thinks positively and takes on the bowlers, but in a subtle way. I always look up to her. We have good camaraderie and I enjoy batting with her.”

A moment to remember

Looking back at her historic century, Yastika said: “It is unbelievable because I was in a very different place six months ago. If you had told me that I would have my name on the honours board at Lord’s, I wouldn’t have believed it. But I was taking small steps to that place and I have worked really hard. My family’s support has been there since the beginning.”

More than her hundred, she wanted to ensure India had enough runs on the board. “We had to make a big score at a good rate so that we would have enough time to take England’s 10 wickets,” said Yastika. “That was on my mind. I always play my best when I play for the team. I never think about my own score. Playing for the country is a matter of pride. You must have seen my celebration; I kissed the flag on my helmet. I am proud that I could do it for my country.”

She could serve the country with both gloves — the batting as well as keeping ones — for years to come. Her class has to be acknowledged, and she deserves a long run.

Interestingly, Yastika is not part of the squad for the Asian Games in Aichi-Nagoya, Japan, starting September 19. She is the only player to be dropped from the team that played at the T20 World Cup in England, where India was knocked out in the group stage.