Smriti Mandhana (born 18 July 1996) is an Indian international cricketer and the vice-captain of the Indian women's national team. She was part of the Indian team that won the 2025 Women's Cricket World Cup, the Women's Asia Cup in 2016 and 2022. She also won a gold medal in the 2022 Asian Games, and a silver medal in the 2022 Commonwealth Games representing India.
Mandhana has scored more than 10,000 runs in international cricket. She holds several records including the record for the most international centuries (shared with Meg Lanning) and the second most centuries in Women's One Day Internationals (WODI). She has scored the second most runs and the most half-centuries in Women's Twenty20 Internationals (WT20I). She is the first Indian to score a century in all three formats of women's international cricket–WTests, WODIs and WT20Is, and also holds the record for the fastest century in the ODI format by any Indian batter.
In domestic cricket, Mandhana represents Maharashtra. She captains Royal Challengers Bengaluru in the Women's Premier League (WPL), and had led them to WPL titles in the 2024 and 2026 seasons. She led the Trailblazers in the Women's T20 Challenge from 2019 to 2022, while winning the title in the 2020 season. In 2016, she was signed by Brisbane Heat in the Australian Women's Big Bash League (WBBL). She has also played for Hobart Hurricanes, Sydney Thunder, and Adelaide Strikers in the WBBL, Western Storm in the Women's Cricket Super League and Southern Brave in The Hunded.
Mandhana has won four ICC Awards including Women's Cricketer of the Year in 2018 and 2021, and WODI Cricketer of the Year in 2018 and 2024. She was also nominated for the WT20I Player of the Year in 2021, and the Women's Cricketer of the Year in 2022. She received the Best International Cricketer award by the Board of Control for Cricket in India in 2018 and 2025. She was awarded the Arjuna Award by the Government of India in 2019. She was named as the Women's Leading Cricketer in the World for 2024 by Wisden.
Smriti Mandhana was born on 18 July 1996 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, to Smita and Shrinivas Mandhana, in a Marwari Hindu family. Her father worked as a chemical distributor, while her mother is a housewife. When she was two years old, her family moved to Madhavnagar, a suburb of Sangli in Maharashtra, where she completed her schooling. She attended Chintaman Rao College of Commerce in Sangli.
Mandhana's father and brother had played cricket at the local level. Watching her brother compete in the junior state tournaments inspired Mandhana to take up the sport.
By the age of nine, Mandhana was selected for Maharashtra's under-15 team, and by eleven, she was picked for the Maharashtra under-19 team. Her breakthrough came in October 2013, when she became the first Indian woman to score a double-century in a List A match against Gujarat under-19 team in the West Zone under-19 tournament at the Alembic Cricket Ground in Vadodara. She scored an unbeaten 224 runs off 150 balls.
In the 2016–17 edition of the Women's Challenger Trophy, Mandhana scored three half-centuries for India Red in as many games. She helped her team win the trophy by making an unbeaten 62 off 82 balls in the final against India Blue, and emerged as the tournament's top-scorer with 192 runs.
Debut and early years (2013–2016)
Mandhana made her Women's One Day International (WODI) and Women's Twenty20 International (WT20I) debut for the India women's national team in April 2013, when Bangladesh toured India. She scored 48 runs across the two matches she played in the WODI series. She scored 39 runs while opening the batting in her debut and the only WT20I she played in the series. In August 2014, Mandhana was one of the eight players on debut in the Test match victory against England at Sir Paul Getty's Ground in Wormsley. She scored 22 and 51 in her first and second innings respectively and shared an opening-wicket partnership of 76 runs with Thirush Kamini in the second innings while chasing 182 runs for victory.
During India's tour of Australia in 2016, Mandhana scored her first international century against Australia in the second WODI game of the series. Held at the Bellerive Oval in Hobart, she scored 102 off 109 balls in a losing cause. Later in the year, she was the only Indian player to be named in the ICC Women's Team of the Year for 2016.
World Cup final and formative years (2017–2020)
Mandhana sustained an anterior cruciate ligament injury in January 2017, and missed the World Cup Qualifier and the Quadrangular Series in South Africa during her five-month recovery period. She returned to the Indian squad for the 2017 Women's Cricket World Cup. In the first match against England in Derby, she helped her team win by scoring 35 runs, and was named as the player of the match. She score her second career century in the match against West Indies in the group stage of the tournament. India reached the final of the World Cup where the team lost to England by nine runs.
Mandhana scored the fastest fifty for India in WT20Is off 24 balls against New Zealand in February 2019. In March 2018, she scored a half-century off 30 balls against Australia in the 2017–18 India women's Tri-Nation Series. In the following month, she was named the player of the series in the three-match WODI series played during England's tour of India. In October 2018, she was named in India's squad for the Women's World Twenty20 tournament in the West Indies. Ahead of the tournament, the International Cricket Council named her as one of the key players to watch for in the tournament. During the tournament, she became the third Indian cricketer for score over a thousand runs in WT20I matches. She ended that year as the leading run-scorer in WODIs with 669 runs at a batting average of 66.90. She was awarded the ICC Women's Cricketer of the Year and the ICC Women's ODI Player of the Year in the 2018 ICC Awards.
In February 2019, Mandhana was named as the captain of Indian squad for the three match WT20I series against England after regular captain Harmanpreet Kaur was ruled out with an ankle injury. At 22 years and 229 days, She became the youngest T20I captain for India when she led the team in the first T20I in Guwahati. In May 2019, she won the International Woman Cricketer of the Year awards at CEAT International Cricket Awards 2019. In November 2019, during the series against West Indies, she became the third-fastest cricketer, in terms of innings, to score 2,000 runs in WODIs, doing so in her 51st innings. In January 2020, she was named in Indian squad for the 2020 ICC Women's T20 World Cup in Australia.
Consistency and record breaking run (2021–2024)
In May 2021, Mandhana was named in Indian squad for the one-off test match against England. In August 2021, she was part of the Indian test squad for the match against Australia. In the first innings of the match, she scored her first century in Test cricket, and thus became the first Indian women's cricketer to score a century in both ODIs and Tests in Australia. She was named the ICC Women's Cricketer of the Year in the 2021 ICC Awards.
In March 2022, she was part of the Indian team for the 2022 Women's Cricket World Cup in New Zealand. In July 2022, she was the vice-captain of the Indian team that won the silver medal in the cricket tournament at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, England. She was also part of the team that won the gold medal in the cricket tournament at the 2022 Asian Games.