Smriti Mandhana Breaks Kohli, Ganguly’s Record During Her Innings Against West Indies

Smriti Mandhana created quite a few records during her sparkling innings of 74 in the third ODI against the West Indies women yesterday.

It was Smriti’s first game in the series as she was not fit to take part in the first couple of fixtures. She had sustained a blow on her toe ahead of the ODI series against South Africa and she had to remain away from action for a few weeks.

Smriti was expected to play in the West Indies series from the first game itself, but she couldn’t get fit in time. However, as she returned, she made a mark straightaway scoring 74 off just 63 balls in the third ODI.

Smriti put together 141 runs with the other opener Jemimah Rodrigues for the first wicket and made a mockery of the target that West Indies had set for India.

It was the ninth time in succession that Smriti crossed the 50-run mark for India while chasing. Before her, the only person who had done that in women’s cricket was the former New Zealand skipper Suzie Bates. Suzie is also an opener and is still playing for New Zealand.

During her innings, Smriti also crossed the tally of 2000 runs in ODI cricket in just 51 innings. She became the fastest Indian women’s cricketer to reach the mark.

If both men’s and women’s cricket are taken together, Smriti would fall second in the list of the fastest Indian cricketers to reach 2000 ODI runs.

Shikhar Dhawan is topping the list as he completed his 2000 ODI runs in just 48 innings. Smriti might not have left Dhawan behind, but she has left behind two of India’s greatest white ball players, Virat Kohli and Sourav Ganguly.

While Ganguly required one more innings than Smriti to get to 2000 ODI runs, it took Virat two more innings as compared to Smriti to get to that figure.