Smriti Mandhana registers second most fifty plus scores in T20Is

Indian opener Smriti Mandhana has continued her excellent form in T20Is, scoring her 26th fifty in the format. 

Batting first on a slow track in Dambulla that had already seen two matches played on it, Mandhana looked in touch from her first ball. She scored 10 fours in her innings, four of them on the off side and six on the leg side, as Sri Lanka bowled a lot of balls in the pitch. 

After these fours, Mandhana reached 70 boundaries in the continental tournament and passed Chamari Athapaththu to become the batter with the most boundaries in the Women’s T20 Asia Cup. 

Meanwhile, this was her fourth fifty-plus score in a T20I knockout game, and she also equalled Beth Mooney's record for most 50-plus scores in T20I knockouts. 

The left-hander now also has the joint most 50-plus scores in Women’s T20 Asia Cups, equalling Mithali Raj and Murshida Khatun’s record of three 50s.

Earlier, she scored a 55*(39) against Bangladesh in the semi-final, which India won with ease to reach the final. Just two innings prior to that, she had scored another fifty (54* off 40) against the South African women in the bilateral T20I series. Overall, she has had a stellar 2024 and is the fourth-highest run-scorer in the world so far, with 495 runs at an average of 45 and a strike rate of 122.8. 

It was due to her 60(47) and crucial contributions from Richa Ghosh and Jemimah Rodrigues that the Indian women reached a competitive 165/6 in the final against Sri Lanka. 

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