At the peak of her powers, Smriti Mandhana is still improving
The world's most mesmerizing cover-driving queen can now slog
Consistent improvement has been the refrain of Smriti Mandhana's India career. In 2018-19, she gave a major shot in the arm to her white-ball batting when she added a slog sweep to her kitty with which she has since hit truckloads of runs. During the 2022 Commonwealth Games, the erudite observers at ESPNcricinfo noted that she had begun scooping and paddle-sweeping more frequently. All this led to something uncanny: from being the best left-handed striker through the offside in the early part of her career, Mandhana has now become a strapping whacker on the legside.
This is uncanny for two reasons. Firstly: it is not just that Mandhana is scoring more runs through leg in front of square, but also that she is doing this by lofting the ball more. During the WPL this year, I had privately noted that she was getting out caught on the legside boundary more frequently, a consequence in part of how much more accurate female bowlers have become recently and are therefore targeting her stumps (a smart strategy not just because of the general reason that it brings two new dismissals into play but also because of the specific reason that Mandhana in her early years was a phenom through the offside). But even when we control for the lines of bowlers, this trend holds. Besides, she is not scoring these runs through rotating shots - that would be an unsurprising consequence when bowlers target your stumps more - but by hitting it up in the air more regularly.
Secondly, simply because of how rare this kind of thing is in the women's game. In the same time period, since 2022, lofted shots in front of square on the legside returned an average of 18.45 at a strike-rate of 241.79, a long way adrift of the corresponding figures in men's T20, 22.13 and 326.05. It's not the most current evidence, but research in biomechanics suggests that female hitters do not exhibit proficiency in several key variables linked with hitting success in men's cricket, most importantly, extension of the front elbow on bat-ball contact. This comes with heavy caveats: hitting in top-flight women's cricket has come a long way since this evidence was publicized and we don't know for certain that what works for male anatomies should also work for female anatomies. That said, combined with the lower quality of pitches that women players on average find themselves playing on, it tells us a story.
But all that puts Mandhana on a plane of her own, at par with elite male hitters of the world. In the same time period, she has hit 523 runs while lofting in front of square on the legside at a strike-rate of 295.48 and an average of 29.05.
There's more: this year, she seems to have added something new to her kitty. The sample size for this is small, so it is wise to hold one's horses before committing heavily to this hypothesis. But I think that since the WPL she has developed the ability to flick over midwicket without advancing down the pitch. There is support in the data for this: among lofted shots, the flick was amongst her least productive shots until 2024, never bringing her more than 15 runs in a year. This year, she was seen employing this shot to perfection in the limited-overs series against South Africa, and less frequently, in the Women's Asia Cup. According to the data I have, overall, she has hit three fours and sixes each using this shot in 2024, making it her second-most productive lofting stroke in this region.
The final assertion here is partly a product of objective confirmation by the data and partly my own subjective observation, so I won’t blame you if you think that this is rather flimsy. But don't let that distract you from the rest of what this article lays out. This is a cricketer who has improved in some way or form in every year of her international cricket career, and she deserves to be seen. Smriti Mandhana, once the world's most mesmerizing cover-driving queen, can now slog.