Indian opener Smriti Mandhana brushed off a sluggish start to score a half-century and help India register a dominating win over Australia in the first T20I of the three-T20I series. After India’s nine-wicket win, Mandhana recalled telling head coach Amol Muzumdar to treat them as harshly as the Mumbai Ranji team for getting whitewashed by Alyssa Healy-led side in the three-ODI series.
"The way the WODI series went, we were all very disappointed. We worked on ourselves in the 2 days we had. Really pleased with ourselves, especially after that last game. We analysed a lot about what went wrong in the last couple of days. We had a good long meeting with all of us," Mandhana said.
"I remember telling coach (Amol Muzumdar) to not be soft on us during the meeting and to be as harsh as he is on the Mumbai Ranji team.”
Mandhana lauded teenager Titas Sadhu for a match-winning four-fer that helped the hosts bowl out Australia for 141. She compared her performance to legendary Indian pacer Jhulan Goswami.
“The seamers bowled really well today, Titas was brilliant. She comes from Bengal and Bengal has already given us a legendary cricketer (Jhulan Goswami), don’t want to draw comparisons but she has a lot of clarity, especially for her age. It’s a great thing to have, hope she continues the same way,” the opener said.
In the run chase of 142, Mandhana contributed with 54 runs from 52 balls including seven fours and a six. She shared a 137-run opening partnership with Shafali Verma who remained unbeaten for 44-ball 64. This is India’s second-highest opening partnership in the format.
However, the left-handed batter got off to a poor start. She managed to score just three runs off the first 14 balls faced. She broke free with a maximum off Annabel Sutherland on the final ball of the third over.
She also achieved a personal milestone becoming the second Indian to score 3,000 T20I runs after skipper Harmanpreet Kaur. She has 3,052 runs from 126 matches at an average of 27.49 including 23 half-centuries.
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