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Smriti Mandhana is an Indian cricketer who plays for the Indian women's cricket team. The 20-year old Mumbai-girl has already got a century in the ongoing Women’s World Cup, apart from a well-made 90 against hosts England. She has been in the circuit for four years now, since she made her debut in 2013 against Bangladesh. She has also played a couple of Tests which is a rarity in women’s cricket.

In 2013, she scored an unbeaten 224 off 150 balls in the West Zone Under-19 Tournament.

She made her ODI debut at the age of 17 and her Test Debut at the age of 18.

She is the only Indian player to feature in the ICC women’s team of the year in 2016.

Smriti Mandhana is the Youngest Indian woman to score a 50 in T20I cricket.

In 2016, Mandhana was signed up for a one-year deal with Brisbane Heat for the Women's Big Bash League.

She was selected to play for Maharashtra U-19 at the age of just 11. She also happens to be the youngest Indian to score a hundred in senior level cricket. She scored that hundred in Australia at the age of 16, she scored 102 off 109 balls in a losing cause.

posted Jul 11, 2017 by Shubham Murthy

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Unknown Facts about Indian Women's Cricket Team

Though the first women’s cricket match was played in 1934, it took about 40 years for women’s cricket to start in India.

The first match recorded of the Indian Women’s Team was the Test Match series against West Indies in 1976.

Neetu David set a world record in 1995 with 8/53, the best bowling performance in an innings against England at Jamshedpur.

Jhulan Goswami has the most ODI wickets in Women’s Cricket. She has 185 ODI wickets.

India have never lost an ODI against Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ireland, Netherlands or Denmark.

Poonam Raut and Deepti Sharma have the highest ODI partnership in women’s cricket. They scored 320 runs vs Ireland as a pair.

The team got its first Test Match victory against South Africa in 2002 on foreign land.

Mithali Raj, scored a record-breaking 214 runs in a Test match against England in 2002.

The Indian team reached the finals of World Cup in 2005 and 2017, but eventually lost to Australia and England respectively.

Mithali Raj is the first women to score 6000 runs in ODI’s. Mithali reached the milestone in India’s ICC Women’s World Cup 2017 match against Australia.

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12 unknown facts about Mithali Raj the most successful captain of Indian Women’s Cricket Team

Mithali Raj is the captain of the Indian Women's cricket team in Test's and ODI. She is the second highest run scorer in women's international cricket and only second woman cricketer to surpass 5,500 run mark. She started to play the game at the age of 10 and at the age of 17, she was picked for the Indian team. Her ODI debut was against Ireland at Milton Keynes in the year 1999.

Let's take a look at 12 unknown facts about Mithali Raj the most successful captain of Indian Women’s Cricket Team:

1. Mithali Raj was born in Jodhpur on December 3, 1982 and is the daughter of an Air Force officer. She started playing the game at the age of 10.

2. In 2015, she was awarded the Padma Shri, India’s fourth-highest civilian award, which she felt would help the cause of women’s cricket in India.

3. At 17, she made it to the Indian team and, in 1999, she played her first ODI against Ireland at Milton Keynes, scoring 114 runs.

4. In the domestic cricket scene, Mithali plays for the Railways.

5. On August 14, 2002, when she was 19 years old, she broke Karen Rolton’s record of highest individual test score.

6. In 2002, during the Women’s World Cup, Mithali came down with typhoid, which squashed India’s chances of winning.

7. In 2006, under her captaincy, the Indian women’s cricket team got their first Test and Series win in England.

8. In 2006, the Indian team again won the Asian Cup, for the second time in twelve months.

9. In 2003, she became the recipient of the Arjuna Award.

10. She has been described as a “dangerous cricketer” due to her composure at the crease and brisk scoring ability.

11. As a bowler, she can roll her arm over bowling leg-spinners, adding variety to her attack.

12. In 2013, Raj was the No. 1 cricketer in the ODI chart in the women’s division.

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Women's T20 Challenge a step towards an IPL for Harmanpreet, Mandhana and Co

At the peak of the #10YearChallenge social media fad, in January this year, emerged two images of Sydney's Drummoyne Oval on Twitter. One was of an England v West Indies ODI from the 2009 Women's ODI World Cup, with scarcely any spectators in sight; the other of the ongoing Women's Big Bash League final on Australia Day, with a sellout 5,368-strong crowd in attendance. The opening line of the tweet from renowned British broadcaster Alison Mitchell read: "What a difference a decade makes."

As the first multi-team Women's T20 Challenge gears up to run in Jaipur from May 6 to 11, be advised to be reasonable and not expect such scenes to play out at Sawai Mansingh Stadium. But somewhere between women's cricket in India experiencing its own Drummoyne Oval 2019 moment in the future and the one-off women's T20 exhibition match that had less than 200 spectators in attendance at Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium last year, the three-team tournament could warrant its own viral before-and-after photo-post.

Women's T20 Challenge factoids

Harmanpreet Kaur, Smriti Mandhana and Mithali Raj will lead Supernovas, Trailblazers and Velocity - the new team this edition - respectively

Thirty-nine players, including 12 overseas participants and four uncapped Indians (Jasia Akhtar, Komal Zanzad, Shafali Verma and Sushri Dibyadarshini), have been divided among the three squads

In the event of a tie, a Super Over will decide the winners

Teams can use the DRS and a strategic time-out (after the tenth over)

All matches to be broadcast and live-streamed on the BCCI's host broadcasters TV and digital platforms

Free admission for all four matches

What really is the big deal about the Women's T20 Challenge, though?

For starters, this is no longer an 'exhibition' event. With nominated XIs to take the field, and a maximum of four overseas players permitted in each side, the Women's T20 Challenge will be carrying official T20 status, in line with the IPL, the Women's Big Bash League in Australia and the Kia Super League in the UK. Three of the four matches will be night fixtures - a rarity for women's cricket in India - with one starting at 3.30pm India time.

Some of the best female internationals from New Zealand, England, West Indies, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India will be in action in the space of just six days, another unusual occurrence. Unlike last year's game, for which Indian players were only paid a daily allowance, all the participants will get a match fee here.

The BCCI envisages the tournament as a prelude to a full-fledged women's IPL, "the next big step for women's cricket", as Australia captain Meg Lanning put it two months ago. Although Lanning and her Australia team-mates will be missing out on the event, years down the line - how many years, though, is anybody's guess - the Women's T20 Challenge could be acknowledged as the one that changed the narrative around women's cricket in the biggest market for the game.

The debate over whether a market does exist yet for women's cricket in India is far from settled. What one can say with some certainty, though, is that two of India's current players are bonafide stars in overseas leagues.

The highlights of Harmanpreet Kaur - already a "hot property" in the WBBL following her maiden season in 2016-17 and her epic 171 not out - hitting the winning six for Lancashire Thunder on debut at the KSL last July crossed a million views on YouTube inside three days.

Harmanpreet Kaur and Smriti Mandhana pose for the cameras Annesha Ghosh

Smriti Mandhana's record-breaking maiden stint at the same tournament, for her franchise Western Storm, hastened her burgeoning worldwide fan base and earned her a recall at the WBBL's fourth season.

Harmanpreet and Mandhana, along with two of India's - and cricket's - all-time greats, Mithali Raj and Jhulan Goswami, and Veda Krishnamurthy and teenager Jemimah Rodrigues are now faces of many home-grown and international brands. Their social-media following runs into millions, more than some of the world's best known non-cricket female athletes.

On the performance front, India have had good showings in the recent past, at least as world tournaments go. A runners-up finish in the 2017 World Cup and a semi-final qualification in the 2018 T20 World Cup were both classic underdog sports stories - where they punched above their weight to knock down andknock out heavyweights of power-hitting in non-subcontinental conditions - that made big news.

Those two campaigns alone should have inspired the richest cricket board in the world to piggyback on the brand value of its IPL men's franchises and get its own women's league off the ground. But the groundswell of interest generated by both campaigns was squandered. Following their breakout 2017 World Cup run, India didn't even play an international fixture in the subsequent six months. Besides, during their first home season post-World Cup, Raj and Goswami expressed their reservations about the depth of domestic pool for a women's T20 league to kick off in the country.

The positives of India's first run to the knockouts of the World T20 in eight years, at the 2018 T20 World Cup in the Caribbean, meanwhile, sank in the quicksand of leaked emails and infighting between the Supreme Court-appointed Committee of Administrators that oversees the BCCI. The board, on its part, too, has been apprehensive about starting a women's IPL due to concerns over the quality of its uncapped players, a thought recently echoed by current India head coach WV Raman, in the wake of India's T20 series loss against England.

However, with Raj and Goswami, along with Harmanpreet, Mandhana, and several top-drawer overseas women's stars, unanimously calling for a women's IPL in the recent past for the betterment of the game, the Women's T20 Challenge is the BCCI's response to the clarion call. With the T20 World Cup less than ten months away, the tournament also serves an opportunity for the Indian selectors to scout promising uncapped talent and, as Mandhana mentioned at the pre-tournament press conference, help them "assess which players [uncapped or otherwise] would perform well under pressure."

Whether the Women's T20 Challenge is an overnight success or receives lukewarm response remains to be seen. What one hopes it will do, though, is make for a worthy #10YearChallenge throwback in the timeline of women's cricket or, more ideally, a heartening #FiveYearFlashback post, in 2024.

Squads:

Supernovas: Harmanpreet Kaur (c), Anuja Patil, Arundhati Reddy, Jemimah Rodrigues, Mansi Joshi, Poonam Yadav, Priya Punia, Radha Yadav, Taniya Bhatia (wk), Chamari Atapattu*, Lea Tahuhu*, Sophie Devine*, Natalie Sciver*
Coach: WV Raman

Trailblazers: Smriti Mandhana (c), Bharti Fulmali, D Hemalatha, Deepti Sharma, Harleen Deol, Jasia Akhtar, Jhulan Goswami, R Kalpana (wk), Rajeshwari Gayakwad, Suzie Bates*, Sophie Ecclestone*, Shakera Selman*, Stafanie Taylor*
Coach: Biju George

Velocity: Mithali Raj (c), Devika Vaidya, Ekta Bisht, Komal Zanzad, Shafali Verma, Shikha Pandey, Sushma Verma (wk), Sushri Dibyadarshini, Veda Krishnamurthy, Amelia Kerr*, Danielle Wyatt*, Hayley Matthews*, Jahanara Alam*
Coach: Mamatha Maben

*Overseas players

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Interesting Facts About "The rising Star of Indian Cricket" Rishabh Pant

Rishabh Pant has gradually been ascending as the following huge thing in Indian cricket. The wicket-attendant batsman rose to popularity with splendid exhibitions at the U19 level. At his lady full season in Ranji Trophy, he set the records ablaze with predictable severe batting. With runs originating from his bat voluntarily, the youthful Delhi chap will undoubtedly exceed expectations at the largest amount sometime in the future.

At such a youthful age, he is occupied with tormenting the best bowlers of the household circuit. With the Indian group searching for a substitution for MS Dhoni post the 2019 World Cup, Pant has a decent case served for himself. The youthful child needs to keep performing at the household level and the call will without a doubt arrive when the day coaxes for him.

1. Roots and beginnings

Rishabh Pant was conceived on October 4, 1997 at Haridwar in Uttarakhand. As a youthful child, he swapped urban areas in an offer to locate a decent cricket mentor. He began off with Roorkee and afterward moved to Delhi. He had a brief stretch in Rajasthan before at last settling in Delhi.

2. Moving to Rajasthan on mentor's recommendation

At 12 years old, Pant was prepared by mentor Tarak Sinha, a similar mentor who trained Shikhar Dhawan. Sinha exhorted Pant to move to Rajasthan from Delhi looking for better open doors. He did precisely that and spoke to Rajasthan at U14 and U16 level.

3. Tossed out of the foundation

Unexpectedly, Rishabh Pant confronted an ouster from the Rajasthan cricket hover for being an 'untouchable'. This happened after Pant had effectively played age bunch cricket in Rajasthan. That did not stall the spirits of the young fellow and he kept on playing with full enthusiasm.

4. Back to Delhi with a blast

Rishabh Pant moved back to Delhi after his Rajasthan ouster. Scarcely months before his eighteenth birthday, he made his First-Class make a big appearance for Delhi. He finished his most recent two years of tutoring in Delhi. He scored 57 on his First Class make a big appearance second innings against Bengal in 2015.

5. Exceeding expectations at the U19s

Gasp was named in the India U19 squad for the ICC U19 World Cup 2016 held at Bangladesh. He turned out to be the champion entertainer for India as India U19 completed as the runner-up of the competition. He hit 3 continuous fifties in the competition.

6. Quickest fifty in U19 World Cup

In a similar competition, he hit the speediest fifty at U19 worldwide level. He smacked a fifty in only 18 balls against Nepal. He wound up with a score of 78 off 24 balls. In the following match against Namibia U19, he scored 111 off 96 balls to guide India U19 to finals.

7. The IPL Connect

On the day when Pant scored a hundred against Namibia U19, he was purchased by the Delhi Daredevils in the IPL for an incredible 1.9 crore rupees.

8. Adores the virtuoso

Rishabh Pant is a vigorous enthusiast of previous Australian wicket-manager batsman Adam Gilchrist. No big surprise why he joined a comparable style of play.

9. Third most youthful triple century in Ranji Trophy

Gasp pounded a splendid 308 off only 326 balls in the Ranji experience against Maharashtra in the 2016-17 season. He turned into the third most youthful batsman after Wasim Jaffer and Abhinav Mukund to hit a Ranji triple. He likewise turned into the second wicket-manager to do as such.

10. Near a legend

His thump of 308 is the second most astounding for Delhi in First Class cricket after Raman Lamba's 312 in 1994.

11. Scoring the speediest Ranji ton

In the 2016-17 season, he crushed the speediest Ranji Trophy century. His century fell off only 48 balls against Jharkhand.

12. On a six-hitting spree

In the match when he scored the speediest ton in Ranji history, Pant clobbered 21 sixes. This remaining parts to be the second most elevated number of sixes hit by a batsman in First Class cricket in India.

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Intersting and Unknown facts about Indian cricket team

ML Jaisimha and Ravi Shastri are the only Indians to bat on all five days of a Test

Shahid Afridi used Sachin Tendulkar's bat to hit the fastest ever ODI century

Lala Amarnath is the only bowler to dismiss Don Bradman “hit wicket” in Test cricket

Vinod Kambli's Test match average is better than his childhood friend Sachin TendulkarThe only cricketer to play Test cricket for India and England is Saif Ali Khan’s grandfather, Iftikhar Ali Khan Pataudi

India is the only country to win the 60-Over, 50-Over and 20-Over World Cup

VVS Laxman is the only Indian cricketer to have played 100 Test matches and did not play a single World Cup match.

Indian batsman Mohinder Amarnath is the only cricketer in cricket history to have been dismissed for handling the ball and obstructing the field.

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10 Interesting and unknown facts about 'The Emerging Star' Hardik Pandya

Hardik Pandya reflects a perfect case where talent overcomes all sorts of adversity and attains success. The Mumbai Indians star hails from an unobtrusive foundation. He is however a liberally capable cricketer who has become well known in a limited ability to focus time. He is touted as the 'man for the future' by numerous present and previous players.

Let's take a look at 10 Interesting and unknown facts about 'The Emerging Star' Hardik Pandya:

1. Birth

Hardik Pandya was conceived on eleventh October 1993 in Choryasi, Surat, Gujarat.

2. Growing years

Hardik Pandya's developing years were difficult and he experienced childhood in hardship. Krunal, his sibling and Hardik would regularly spend the whole day exclusively on one dinner.

3. Passionate father

His dad Himanshu was an impassioned significant other of the diversion. He was drawn towards cricket in light of his dad who took him to watch coordinates in Vadodara.

4. The start of it

Subsequent to seeing the enthusiasm for the diversion, Hardik Pandya alongside his senior sibling Krunal Pandya were enlisted in the Kiran More International Academy at 5 years old and 7 individually.

5. Struggles in life

His dad needed to leave his place of employment in the wake of agony from heart assault thrice. Life ended up plainly harder for him after the sole provider of the family was bound to bed rest.

6. Education

Hardik Pandya fizzled ninth class and quit instruction to concentrate on his cricketing dreams.

7. Jack of all trades

Hardik Pandya is an all-rounder. His mentors recognize him as an ingenious player who is neither an ordinary batsman nor a sublimely gifted bowler. Be that as it may, he gives an affirmation that he can passage well in both viewpoints and create coordinate wining exhibitions which he has demonstrated in his past trips.

8. Nickname

Hardik Pandya has an exceptionally cool epithet in the Mumbai Indians changing areas. He is called "Rockstar" by his colleagues.

9. A leg spinner

Hardik Pandya was leg spinner before one day all of a sudden he changed to crease knocking down some pins. Once at the Kiran More International Academy, the group was one quick bowler short before a neighborhood coordinate. Kiran more requesting that he assume the liability. He promptly acknowledged the assignment and overwhelmed everybody by grabbing seven wickets in that match. This is the means by which he turned into a medium pacer.

10. Entry in the big league

Pandya was spotted by then Mumbai Indians mentor John Wright in a West Zone match of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy. Every last prominent individual from Mumbai Indians was awed by him amid the determination trials. Head mentor Ricky Ponting short-recorded Hardik in the wake of experiencing the recording of more than 50 short-recorded cricketers in front of the IPL 8 player sell off in February. He was in this way purchased by the establishment at base cost of 10 lakhs.

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Facts about The Turbanator "Harbhajan Singh".

Harbhajan Singh is an Indian international cricketer and former captain of IPL team Mumbai Indians and Punjab state for the 2012–13 Ranji Trophy season. A specialist spin bowler, he has the second-highest number of Test wickets by an off spinner, behind Sri Lanka's Muttiah Muralitharan.

He was just 18 years-old when he started his International career, He played his first Test match against Australia where he scored 4 not out and a duck, and recorded the modest match figures of 2/136 as Australia won the match by eight wickets.

He is the first Indian to take a hat-trick in Test cricket in 2001.

He was banned twice in his career, In 2008, he was banned by the ICC and was charged for racial insult towards Andrew Symonds.

In 2008, he was banned from the first IPL after slapping Sreesanth.

In 2003 he was awarded Arjuna Award and in 2009 he was conferred the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honour.

He became the first no. 8 batsman to score back-to-back Test centuries.

On 29 october 2015, Harbhajan Singh got married to bollywood actress Geeta Basra in Jalandar, Punjab.

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