New Delhi : In the early 1990s, many cricket fans in the country used to switch off their television sets when Sachin Tendulkar got out in ODIs. Their belief was that India’s chances of winning the match were solely dependent on Tendulkar, and they weren’t far off the mark at that time.The situation looks quite similar in Indian women’s cricket these days, again in the ODI format. In place of Tendulkar, the Indian women’s team have Smriti Mandhana at the top of the order, whose runs are becoming increasingly crucial to India’s victory chances, especially in the ODI format.Mandhana has taken her game to a different level this year, as the Aussies will attest after the recently-concluded ODI series. She plundered 300 runs from three matches with backto-back centuries at a strike rate of 138.24 and an average of 100.The nonchalance with which she went about India’s pursuit of a mammoth 413-run target against the reigning world champions at the Arun Jaitley Stadium here on Saturday night was quite a spectacle. She treated the Aussie bowlers with disdain to race to a record-breaking hundred. While she was at the crease, there was belief that India would do the improbable and chase the tall target down, though they eventually fell short by 43 runs in the third game of the series.Mandhana, however, says she is not feeling the pressure of shouldering India’s batting burden. “Everyone in this squad is a match-winner, not just the XI but all 15. At any point, anyone can step up. If you look at the last 12 months, we’ve posted 300-plus totals even when I got out early. That shows there is no dependence on one player,” she added.The fact is India’s win percentage goes up when Mandhana gets among the runs, and the team management would be hoping that she carries her rich vein of form into the World Cup starting in a week’s time.“We knew throughout the series that Smriti will come hard at us. She is a classy player. She has been amazing for India in the last couple of years in particular,” said Beth Mooney, the other centurion of the game. Ever since she burst onto the scene a decade back, Mandhana uses her timing with great dexterity to pierce the gaps in the field, especially on the off-side. But what has added a different dimension to her game is the way she has worked on her on-side game.Mandhana believes it is a sense of calmness which has helped her game. “Outside the field, things have changed massively for me. The routines which I follow and the work ethic, that’s one thing I felt could be better.“In the last 12 months, I worked constantly on that. I’m not a finished product yet, I’m still learning and improving,” Mandhana said.
