Women’s Cricket: The Mandhana Touch

AT ONE POINT early on in India’s do-or-die match against New Zealand in the ongoing women’s 50-over World Cup, Smriti Mandhana looked up at the digital scoreboard of the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai and shook her head. She said this at the post-match presentation later with a smile plastered on her face, but when the moment occurred, and we as­sume it was at the end of the fourth over, with India’s openers—the fabu­lous pairing of Smriti Mandhana and Pratika Rawal—stuck very much on first gear, what with the score reading six runs in 24 balls, Mandhana admitted to frowning and thinking to herself: “OK, we can’t do that!”

They certainly couldn’t, not if world cricket’s star batter Mandhana as well as the country she represents were to qual­ify for the semifinal of the World Cup at home. After having won their opening two games (against Sri Lanka and Paki­stan, respectively), Harmanpreet Kaur’s India had lost their next three fixtures on the bounce, which made their penulti­mate group game against the Kiwi girls a virtual quarterfinal contest for both sides. Win this match and finish fourth on the eight-team table, in turn booking the fi­nal semifinal spot. Or lose, and lose it all. In a year where she hasn’t often second-guessed herself, the Number1 ranked women’s ODI batter in the world didn’t just break her shackles to pull India out of their three-game rut, she did so in the most spectacular fashion.

By the time the lefty was dismissed in the 33rd over, Mandhana and Rawal had put on 212 runs for the opening stand, a partnership record for the Indian women’s team for any wicket at any World Cup. Mandhana’s contribution to the stand was 109 runs, her fifth women’s ODI hundred of 2025. Fifth! The most by a woman in a calendar year, beating her own record of four one-day hundreds in a year that she notched up in 2024. Which means that in the space of 16 short months, between June 2024 and now, the 29-year-old from Sangli, Maharashtra, has scored nine cen­turies in the 50-over game, the single-most productive spell of run-scoring in the his­tory of the women’s game.

While these dizzying feats had shattered batting records, on this par­ticular day in the outskirts of Mumbai, Mandhana’s (and Rawal’s) century helped India register a massive win over New Zea­land and qualify for the semifinals, where they will take on the only undefeated team of this World Cup, seven-time champions Australia. Whatever happens in that match (this article was written for the magazine before the fixture on October 30), widely being billed as the most important game of cricket that will be played by the Indian women’s team on home soil, the vice-cap­tain has done more than enough in 2025 to widen the scope of the women’s game like no other Indian cricketer has done be­fore. Win or lose later this week, the year of Mandhana has forever been immortalised.

Perhaps it has something to do with the Number 18 she wears at the back of her jer­sey, but Mandhana has influenced white-ball cricket in the women’s game quite like Virat Kohli has in the men’s equivalent. Like Kohli, she has made blind belief in her technique and ability the centrepiece of her method, allowing said belief to bleed into every aspect of her game. Like with Kohli, the team now revolves around her batting innings in setting a target or hunting one down. In the lead-up to this World Cup, India played Australia in a three-match series. In the second game in Chandigarh, Mandhana scored a hundred (117) batting first and Australia lost by 102 runs, their largest margin of defeat in the format. In the following game, played in New Delhi, the Australian women bat­ted first and posted the first-ever 400-plus score in the sport, all but putting to an end the contest in the first innings itself. But someone forgot to tell Mandhana that.

In what was possibly her most devas­tating—and era-defining—knock yet, Mandhana blazed away to the fastest-ever hundred by an Indian in ODI cricket, man or woman, getting to the three-figure mark in 50 balls, two balls quicker than Kohli’s effort against the Aussies in Jaipur back in 2013. By the time she was out, for a frankly insane 63-ball 125, India were well over halfway to the target of 413 and it was only the 21st over. India eventually lost, but not before making a real fist of it (369 all out in 47 overs) and giving the best team in the world an almighty scare. But to really get an insight into her mentality, all one had to do was attend the press conference later.

Asked if the hundred was her best knock as it was widely hailed by anyone who watched it, Mandhana smiled sadly and replied: “It would have been the best if we had won the match.” It is this very thought process, to believe that she can lead her team to victory from any position, no matter how dire, is what has caused a revolution in the women’s game in this country, and it perhaps stems from the con­fidence she derived from playing a pivotal role in winning her first major trophy—the Women’s Premier League (WPL) in 2024.

A whole year before Kohli and his men ended the long spell of ill luck at Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), Mandhana gave RCB their first major title andlookedintothecameraandsaid:“Eesala cup namdu (This year the trophy is ours).” Words Kohli would repeat in 2025. Anyway, scoring over 300 runs for her team in a win­ning WPL campaign, including runsinthefinal, injectedherwith the kind of confidence required to go on one of the great spells of run-scoring in limited-overs cricket. For soon after WPL ended in 2024, the South Africans took on India in a three-match series, all of them played in Bengaluru. Mandhana’s returns were 117, 136 and 90. That year, she ended up scoring 1,659 runs across the three formats, the most inter­national runs by a woman in a singlecalendar year. Whenasked how she scored fiveinternational hundreds in one year, she said this to ESPNCricinfo: “Scoring five international centuries was mostly down to not thinking much about scoring centuries.”

That mantra has held her in good stead this year too, for her numbers got even bigger when Mandhana became the first-ever woman to score over a thousand runs in 50-over crick­et in a calendar year, currently having notched 1,293 runs in 2025 in ODIs alone (her fel­low opener Rawal could have passed the mark this year too, currently on 976 runs, but an injury has ruled her out of the World Cup). Out of those, 365 runs have been registered at the group stage of the World Cup, placing her at the very top of the individual runs heap.

While the hundred against New Zealand (her first and only thus far at this campaign) was timely, Mandhana has been in top form in all the games that have mattered, with a pair of 80s in losing causes against Australia and England. Whether this phenomenal momentum of big runs against the big sides will carry on into the knockout stage remains to be seen, Mandhana has already revolutionised the sport in this country, giving women’s cricket a real sheen with her magic. A maiden World Cup trophy will only add to the glitter, but women’s cricket in India has already found its real gold.