By Prachi Mishra
Smriti Mandhana, 28, scored a blistering 135 runs off just 70 balls, clenching the record of India’s fastest women centurion in ODIs at the Niranjan Shah Stadium in Rajkot on Wednesday. The record was earlier held by Harmanpreet Kaur, who scored her ton against South Africa in 87 balls in the year 2024. Mandhana’s innings consisted of seven sixes and 12 boundaries.
With this inning, she broke multiple records, scoring her 10th ODI century and registering herself as the third-most centuries holder in women’s ODI, a pedestal that she shares with England’s Tammy Beaumont. Moreover, she now also holds the record for seventh fastest century in Women’s ODI, alongside another England cricketer Charlotte Edwards, who has retired now.
The left-hander managed to score her half-century in just 39 balls and notched her performance even further taking only 31 balls to score the other half.
Mandhana, who was captaining the Indian side in Harmanpreet Kaur’s absence, took the decision to bat first and the Indian batters completely banked upon this opportunity scoring 435 runs for 5 wickets, their highest ever ODI score. Mandhana herself built a 233 runs partnership with Pratika Rawal for the first wicket, with even Pratika (159) scoring her century in the process. Rawal also won the Player of the Match and Player of the Series award in the post match presentation for her consistent knocks throughout the series.
Indian Women’s Team clean sweeped their Ireland counterpart in the three-match ODI series with their stellar performance. Gaby Lewis, Ireland’s women ODI captain, in the post-match presentation, said that as it was the team’s first time playing India, they got to learn a lot of things from this series.
Head Coach of Indian Women Team, Amol Muzumdar, said that India has maintained a winning streak and that’s a good sign. Though, in the T20 series with West Indies, we struggled a little to clinch victory but apart from that the team has managed to win all the matches afterwards.