In the world of women’s cricket, Smriti Mandhana stands as a beacon of inspiration. With each stroke of the bat and every milestone achieved, she has etched her name in the annals of cricket. Her batting style, characterized by perfect timing and effortless power, has been revered by fans around the globe. Her journey from Sangli, a small village in Maharashtra, to becoming one of the world’s leading opening batters is a testament to her talent and dedication towards the sport.

Smriti was born on 18 July 1996, and was raised in a cricket-loving household. Inspired by her father’s tales of district-level cricket and her brother’s exploits on the field, Smriti’s fascination with the game bloomed. As her skill set expanded, so did her ambitions. While she dedicated herself to cricket, she also prioritized her education. She completed a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Chintamanrao College of Commerce, Sangli.

With rigorous practice and unyielding determination, at nine, Smriti made it to the Maharashtra Under-15 team, and by eleven, she was already playing for the Under-19s. In 2013, she etched her name in history by becoming the first Indian woman to score a double century (224 runs) in an Under-19 one-day game.

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In 2007, when the inaugural ICC T20 World Cup tournament was to be played, India had hardly any credentials worth the name in the shortest version of the game. So a team under Mahendra Singh Dhoni was dispatched in which many star names were conspicuous by their absence. So no one would have grumbled even if the Indian team had returned without winning any of its matches. However, what followed is now history.

Matters have changed since those yesteryears and now the Indian men’s team is ranked among the best T20 teams in the world. In contrast, the Indian women’s cricket team has yet to inscribe its name on any of the ICC World Cups. The closest that it came to doing so was when under Mithali Raj the Indian team entered the final of the WODI but lost rather badly to the same English team that it had beaten a few days earlier.

The Under-19 inaugural T20 World Cup for the girls was to be played in South Africa in January 2023 and the timing of the tournament could not have been any better for the Indian girls. Although Virat Kohli gave the Indian team a motivational talk before the team’s departure, there were two major factors that turned out to be favourable for the Indian contingent.

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The year 2021 has been bad for Indian cricket in more than one way. First, the Test Championship final ended in a disaster and when a team was expected to rewrite history in South Africa, although the beginning seemed to be auspicious but then it saw Indian men’s cricket at its abyss, at least in reference to its latest achievements and reputation. So bad was the team’s nosedive that a dejected Virat Kohli decided to give away his leadership. However, just like the last Olympics, it was the Indian women who put on some balm on the country’s injured cricket reputation.

It is after several years that there is no male Indian cricketer in the ICC’s list of ‘Cricketers of the Year’ for 2021 in any category. The lone Indian cricketer in the ICC list is Smriti Shriniwas Mandhana. Winning the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Award on being named as the ICC Women’s Cricketer of the Year, Smriti earned a rare double as she had won the award for the first time in 2018.

Smriti has not only exhibited her prowess with the bat in red and white ball cricket but even while playing with the pink ball in Australia at the Gold Coast, when she scored her maiden Test hundred. To add to her spoils of 2021, she scored a half century against England and in 22 Internationals she scored 855 runs at an average of 38.86.

Born on 18 July 1996 in Mumbai, the year 2013 saw a left-hander teenager make her international debut in white ball cricket but she surprised one and all in becoming the first Indian lady to score a double hundred in one day cricket.

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It was mainly in the 1970s that women’s cricket began to get noticed in India. It was in 1976 that the Indian women’s cricket team, under the leadership of Shantha Rangaswamy, beat their West Indian counterparts in Patna, and the very next year, the Indian skipper also became the first Indian woman to score a Test Century which she did against New Zealand and that too on foreign soil.

While Shantha Rangaswamy was lost in oblivion after her cricketing career another of her contemporaries, Diana Eduljee continues to be in the limelight. The left arm spinner being a part of the Indian Railways continued to participate actively and was also awarded the Padma Shri in 2002. In 2017, she was appointed to the BCCI administration panel by the Supreme Court of India and was largely instrumental in the temporary suspension of two Indian players who are purported to have made some unwarranted comments during a TV show.

Almost two decades after these stalwarts of Indian women’s cricket, Anjum Chopra once again rekindled the weakening flame of women’s cricket in India. While she continues to be heard by cricket fans as an able TV commentator she had the distinction of being the first Indian woman to get an international appointment when she worked with Cricket South Africa women’s team as a technical consultant in 2012-2013.

Now, that we are in the age of Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami, the former has definitely taken Indian women’s cricket to new heights with a runner-up position for our team in the World Cup. Already termed as the Woman Tendulkar, Mithali has an average of 51.00, in both, Tests and Women ODIs and over 37 in T20 Internationals. With more than 6,700 runs in her bag, she is the only lady to have scored more than 6,000 runs in WODIs and 2,000 runs in WT20 Internationals and the only woman cricketer to have played in more than 200 WODIs. The achievements of Jhulan Goswami ought to go along with Mithali as the former has the distinction of having bagged the maximum wickets in WODIs. In fact, March 2012 was a red letter period for Indian Women’s cricket when Mithali and Jhulam held the ICC’s top spot in batting and bowling at the same time.

With her swashbuckling batting style, Harmanpreet Kaur became the first Indian lady to play in the Australian Big Bash League only to be followed by a youngster named Smriti Mandhana. Smriti has started a new glorious chapter in the history of Indian Women’s cricket. In June 2018, the BCCI named Smriti as the Best Women’s International Cricketer and the correctness of the decision can be gauged from the fact that in December 2018, the International Cricket Council awarded Smriti Mandhana with the Rachael Heyhoe-Flint Award for the Best Female Cricketer of the Year. She was also named the ODI Player of the Year by the ICC at the same time; a never-before honour for any Indian woman.

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When 17-year-old Jemimah Rodrigues, representing Mumbai in the U-19 West Zone inter-zonal One Day against Saurashtra slammed an unbeaten 163-ball 202 in November last year, she probably knew that the India Cap was coming sooner rather than later.

For years, women’s cricket suffered from the lack of new faces. There’s always been veteran batswoman Mithali Raj, pacer Jhulan Goswami and then there’s T20 skipper Hermanpreet Kaur. While they’re great players, sport, in order to thrive, needs new players (re: characters).

Simply put, Jemimah isn’t eccentric or flamboyant. She isn’t your normal 17-year-old Bandra (Mumbai) girl either. She comes across as timid, but that’s without a bat in her hand. She’s a nightmare to bowlers and a bore to wicketkeepers (because she seldom misses a shot).

Jemimah debuted for India against South Africa in February this year, and though she didn’t have an overtly great series, the selectors knew that their choice was going to reap huge benefits in the long run. And they didn’t have to wait a lot. Against Australia in the ODI series in Vadodara, Jemimah, who opened the innings for the country for the first time, scored a solid 55-ball 42 and suddenly everyone hailed her as a replacement to Mithali.

In the T20 tri-series against Australia and England at the Brabourne Stadium in March, Jemimah showed her capabilities, even notching up her first international half century. But she remained humble, especially when comparisons were drawn between her and Mithali.

“She (Mithali) is very positive while batting. It’s fun to bat with her and we had a good time while batting. She guides me, telling me to go after which bowler and against which bowler we should take singles. It’s really fun to bat with her. She is my role model and of course, it was a good learning experience for me,” Jemimah said, completely ignoring the comparisons. When prodded further, she said, “You cannot, just cannot compare me with her. I’m nowhere near her,” that’s all that she said.

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GP CAPT ACHCHYUT KUMAR

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]abh Spresam Deeptum or ‘Touch the sky with glory’, so runs the motto of the Indian Air Force and so for one born into an Air Force family with aircraft flying all around since her childhood days, the desire to rise up to the skies, even if not in an aircraft, must have always been there. Such is the story of the world’s highest ranked One Day International batswoman, Padma Shri Mithali Dorai Raj.

In a country where women’s cricket suffers patronage, to be able to rise as the best in the world is nothing short of a miracle. In the past, ladies like Shanta Rangaswamy and Diana Edulji did pave the way for a better future for women’s cricket in India and Anjum Chopra did continue the impetus but modern day women cricketers like Mithali Raj and Jhulam Nishit Goswami have taken Indian women’s cricket to an entirely different level; to be ranked as the best in the world in a game where the best sportswomen seem to be coming from Australia and England, one has to be really good. Have no doubt about the Australian and English strength since among the top ten leading ODI scorers, while three are British there are five Australians.

Born to an Air Warrior of the Indian Air Force, Dorai Raj and Leela Raj, at Jodhpur on 3 December 1982, Mithali took to cricket at the very young age of just ten years. The cricket prodigy needed just seven years to find her way into the Indian ODI squad, making her sensational debut against Ireland, at Milton Keynes, on 26 June 1999. Not to be cowed down by the big occasion, the teenager went on to score an unbeaten 114 runs to announce to the world the coming of a new cricket star. While the 114 remains Mithali’s highest ODI score till date, what is worth noting is that she has remained unbeaten on all the five occasions that she has scored an ODI hundred.

With a teenage appearance on the international scene, a batting average of over 50 in both, Tests as well as ODIs and an international career extending as long as 18 years, Mithali Raj has been rightly termed as the ‘Tendulkar of Women’s Cricket’. Mithali has been a part of the Indian team in the Women’s Cricket World Cup in 2000, 2005, 2009, 2013 and if all goes well will be making her fifth appearance this year; a unique achievement in world cricket and a superhuman achievement in the Indian context.

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