In-form Indian women’s cricketer Smriti Mandhana is ready to play back-to-back two 2018/19 WBBL games on this Saturday (December 15) and Sunday (December 16), both against Sydney Sixes women at Blundstone Arena (Hobart) – her special venue in the cricketing career.
The Blundstone Arena (Hobart) is the venue where Mandhana hit her first ever international cricket century in February 2016. Playing against Australian women at this venue on 5 February 2018, the Indian women’s opener Mandhana scored a brilliant century of 102 off 109 balls. Though she won the Player of the Match award, her team faced a six-wicket defeat in that game.
Two days later, at the same venue and against the same team, Mandhana played another brilliant knock of 55 off 52 balls and this time her team won by five wickets.
Talking about her good memories at this venue, Smriti Mandhana, the Hobart Hurricanes women’s player in 2018 WBBL said on Friday, “I scored my first international century here, so that was one reason why I wanted to come back to Hobart. I’ve had some good memories from Hobart.”
The 22-year-old left-handed opening batter is currently in a dream form with the bat. During last August, Mandhana won the Player of the Tournament award in KSL (KIA Super League) 2018 after finishing as the leading run-scorer in the tournament (421 runs in 9 innings with the average of 60.14).
In recently concluded the 2018 ICC Women’s World T20 in West Indies, the vice-captain Mandhana scored 178 runs in five matches (average 35.60). She has already played two matches in the ongoing WBBL season where she scored 0 and 69 runs respectively during the previous weekend. For her outstanding batting forms, Mandhana credited all her coaches.
Mandhana commented on this, “I had that in my mind but as a player you need to come out of your comfort zone. All my coaches said you need to go, if you want to develop as a player you need to leave your comfort zone. As a player you need to come out of comfort zone … when you come out and play in the WBBL or the KSL (England Super League) there are different expectations of you as a foreign player …it helps when you play in big tournaments like a World Cup.”
