Vice-captain Smriti Mandhana says dwelling on recent ODI World Cup success won’t help since there is lot of room for improvement as young team begin preparation for next year’s T20 World Cup
Smriti Mandhana (right) celebrates the wicket of SL skipper Chamari Athapaththu during the 4th T20I in Trivandrum on Sunday. Pic/BCCI
India’s vice-captain Smriti Mandhana believes that thinking about the World Cup after a successful campaign will not help them win the next one, and said that the Indian team has a lot of scope to improve as they prepare for the global T20 event scheduled for next year.
Mandhana played a prolific knock with the bat in the recently concluded fourth T20I against Sri Lanka in Trivandrum on Sunday after registering poor scores in the first three games. She became the fourth player to complete 10,000 international runs on her way to a 48-ball 80.
“In cricket, you have to start from zero. The scoreboard is always zero for zero. It’s never what you’ve done in the last match or the previous series as well. Internal expectations for me in all three formats are very different. Of course, T20 is slightly in a way where you can’t be extremely hard on yourself after getting out because you’re playing at a pace where there are days when it’ll come off,” Mandhana said in a video shared by the BCCI.
She also stated that the current team, which is preparing for next year’s T20 World Cup, is a ‘work in progress’, and that continuing to think about the recent ODI World Cup win will in no way help the team succeed in the upcoming mega spectacle and would only hamper their preparations. “The ODI World Cup was the biggest thing for women’s cricket, and we did take off that one. So it’s a big, big win. But again, you know, you can’t be thinking about only successes.
“We’ve had times when we could have won matches, but we couldn’t this year. And again, this team being this young, we are always a work in progress. There’s going to be a World Cup, but it’s a work in progress. If you keep thinking about the World Cup, the next one won’t come. If I had to review it more critically, I would give it seven out of 10. We have many areas to improve as a team,” she stated.
Three
No. of times India were eliminated by Australia in the last three editions of the Women’s T20 World Cup — the final in 2020, the semi-finals in 2023, and the group stage in 2024
281
No. of innings Smriti Mandhana took to go past the 10,000-run mark — the fastest in women’s cricket — surpassing former India skipper Mithali Raj
(291 innings)
1703
No. of runs scored by Mandhana in 2025, the most by a player this year
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