Former India captain and current cricket board president Sourav Ganguly was known as 'The god of the off-side'. Smriti Mandhana, with her free-flowing cover-drives during her masterly hundred against Australia in India's historic women's pink-ball Test at the Metricon Stadium in Gold Coast, seems to be on her way to earn the right to be termed 'The goddess of the off-side', as former India opener Wasim Jaffer tweeted on Friday.
Batting imperiously, as if she has been playing with the pink ball under lights since her childhood, Mandhana, like all stylish left-handers do, caressed the ball to the covers, or pulled it savagely, to become the first Indian woman batter to score a hundred in Australia.
Laced with 22 fours, most of them gloriously timed, and a six, her sublime 127-run, 216-ball knock, her maiden Test century, will be remembered as one of the best played by any Indian batter, male or female, in Australia, and has put her team in a strong position in the Test.
What also stood out was the Sangli girl's old-fashioned celebration after she reached her hundred off a pull shot off Ellyse Perry. She took off her helmet and acknowledged the applause from the sparse crowd.
The enormity of her innings can be gauged by the fact that it is now the highest score by a visiting team's batter against Australia in Australia in women's Test cricket. Mandhana now holds the record of being the Indian woman with the highest individual scores in Australia across formats. In ODIs, she has the highest score of 102 and in T20Is, the highest of 66 against Australia.
It's the first time that someone other than an English batter has scored a hundred in women's Test cricket in Australia. All previous seven century-makers have been from England.
After play on Day One, when she was batting on 80, Mandhana said she had carried a pink ball in her kit bag for the last three months. This Test was announced in May, though all she could get in terms of practice against it was just two days.
"We just had two sessions with the pink ball. I was coming from the Hundred (in England) so I didn't really get much time to play with the pink ball, but during the Hundred, I just ordered a pink kookaburra ball, just to keep it in my room because I knew that there is going to be a Test match, so that I can just look at the ball and understand," she said.
"I have actually not batted, I batted for just two sessions, but the pink ball was there in my kit bag for the last two and half, three months. I don't know why I carried it. I thought I will have a session (with it), but I really didn't get time to do that," Mandhana explained during a virtual press conference after play on Thursday.
