Smriti Mandhana

How the ICC Cricketer of the Year Award reinvigorated a jaded Smriti Mandhana

Smriti Mandhana

Still only 22, Mandhana has emerged as one of the best talents on the global circuit. She isn't so much a youngster still trying to stamp her mark – she is already matching previous standards and setting new ones.

In 2018, the left-hand batter really came into her own. In one-day internationals, she scored 669 runs from just 12 innings at a remarkable average of 66.90, and in Twenty20 Internationals, she raked up 622 runs from 23 innings at 28.27 and a strike-rate of 130.67. She was also third on the run-scoring charts for the ICC Women's World T20 2018 in the Caribbean, making 178 from five knocks.

Playing for the Hobart Hurricanes, she continued to show good form in the Women's Big Bash League, but all the cricket in what had been a busy year was taking a toll.

Mandhana said she felt reluctant to hit the gym or practice. But at around the same time, her achievements for the calendar year were recognised through the ICC Awards. She not only claimed the Rachael Heyhoe Flint Award for the ICC Women’s Cricketer of the Year, but also the top honour for the 50-over format. That came as a shot in the arm.

"That award had a huge impact on me because till the end of the year, during the Big Bash, my body was feeling very fatigued," Mandhana revealed in an interview forThe Cricket Monthly. "If you look back, for one and a half years I have not got a break. So from about 21 to 25-26 December, I had got into a kind of zone where I was telling myself, 'I need rest'.

"I didn't feel like going and practising, which is very rare. I had to literally push myself to bat, push myself into the gym. But as soon as that news came out, I read it and I was like, 'You have to get better. You can't be stagnant.' That news motivated me, and the next day I was back to normal: had breakfast, back to practice, wanting to do gym, wanting to do conditioning."

Right since her debut in 2013, Mandhana was spoken of as a promising player, but in the last two years she has ensured that the promise has materialised into consistent results. She credits a more discerning mindset for her improvement.

"I've been selective about shots. Having a lot of shots in your book can make you a better batsman but it gets you in trouble as well, because you may be tempted to feel every ball has to be hit," she reflected. "So selecting my shots has been important, and not having only one kind of game. It's a major thing that has changed in my batting from the start of 2018."

With such rampant success at an early age comes the challenge to remain grounded. How does the left-hander manage that?

"By sleeping," she joked when asked about how she looks after herself. "Look, I don't have a complicated life. I don't get into that zone of being happy or sad about life. I'm a bit of a neutral person. I want to live my life simply, play cricket.

"What happened on the ground, keep it there. Think about it for a few minutes and forget it when I leave the ground. On tours, with all these youngsters coming in, like Jemi [Jemimah Rodrigues], Aru [Arundhati Reddy], Radha [Yadav], Harleen [Deol]… they are always in my room, doing stupid things, talking the most stupid things."

Mandhana now is onto her next challenge, that of international captaincy. She received a promotion to the role after an injury ruled Harmanpreet Kaur out of the T20I series against England. In her first game as captain, India suffered a 41-run loss, but it's all a learning curve.

"More than anything, I want to make my players comfortable because they're who are going to do it for me. And try to take everyone along," she said. "The main aspect of being a captain, in my opinion, is to not think you're the captain.

"You've got be around with everyone, trying to understand what our players need. That will be the main focus of my captaincy – to find out what they demand of me, not them trying to find out what I demand of them."

India Women