Credit: Twitter
The Indian women’s opening batter Smriti Mandhana has gone into the record books as the first player in the Women’s Hundred to reach 500 runs, during the fifth match of the tournament on August 4, Friday. The 27-year-old was batting for Southern Brave, her only franchise in the competition for the last three years, against Welsh Fire at Rose Bowl in Southampton.
During her career at the Women’s Hundred, Smriti Mandhana has scored 503 runs in 17 innings for Southern Brave thus far. During the 2021 season, she put together a decent tally of 167 in 7 innings, while improving the numbers to 211 runs in 8 innings for the next year.
On the opening day of the 2023 edition of the league, August 1, Tuesday, the Mumbai-born played an exemplary innings of 55 runs off 36 deliveries, including five fours and two maximums. She helped Southern Brave put together a very good first innings total of 157/6, which was successfully defended with a margin of 27 runs against Trent Rockets at the Trent Bridge in Nottingham.
Notably, during Friday's match, Welsh Fire got 165/3 in their 100 balls, thanks mainly to the 65 from Hayley Matthews, which included an astonishing 13 fours in all. In the run chase, Southern Brave were in control of the required run rate after a good opening stand of 96 runs in 58 balls, but the rest of the batters couldn’t accelerate the scoring enough from that point onwards.
Smriti Mandhana shouldered the responsibility to try and get her side over the line, but her efforts went in vain after she couldn’t get the five runs on the final delivery of the innings for Southern Brave. With that, the Welsh Fire registered their first win of the Women’s Hundred 2023 with a margin of four runs.
