The 22-year-old Indian women’s cricketer Smriti Mandhana has been elected to get the 2018 Arjuna Award for her recent brilliant batting performances. She is confident that this achievement will motivate her to be a better player and perform well.
The left-handed opening batter recently won Player of the Tournament award in KSL (KIA Super League) 2018 after finishing as the leading run-scorer in the tournament. She scored 421 runs in 9 innings with the average of 60.14 and the strike-rate of 174.68, including one century and two half-centuries. It is the record runs that have been scored by a batswoman in a season of this tournament history.
After getting selected for the Arjuna Award, Mandhana told Women’s CricZone in Colombo, “It is good to get Arjuna Award. First I did not know what Arjuna Award is, when I was 15-16 years old and other people used to get. Amrita ma’am (Amrita Shinde, the former India batter), my mentor, used to say that you will definitely get this when I am 21-22. I used to ask her, ‘what’s that award, I don’t even know.’ When I became 17-18, I understood what it is. I was not expecting to get, I used to think she was just telling like that. It feels good to get the award and definitely motivates me to be a better player and perform well.”
After making her debut in the international cricket in 2013 at the age of just 16, Mandhana has played two Tests, 44 ODIs and 45 T20Is for India Women where she has scored a total of 2,546 runs. Mandhana is the tenth woman cricketer to win the Arjuna Award.
Mandhana feels this kind of achievement will help to grow up the women’s cricket in India as many girls and their parents will focus on this game.
Mandhana said, “It’s good. The more people listen about women cricketers the more the parents will send their girls to play cricket. It is about reading in the newspaper or listening in the news about women cricketers. Awards or performances, it will all help a lot of parents to choose cricket for their girls as a career option. There will be a lot of girls playing cricket in the next two-three years and there will be healthy competition.”
