Mandhana’s record start has India dreaming, but the World Cup still eludes her
Smriti Mandhana is the leading scorer at the Women’s T20 World Cup and has just set an India record for fifties at the tournament. The trophy itself is the one prize that has stayed out of reach.
Jun 21, 2026
Two matches into the Women’s T20 World Cup, the most reliable thing in the tournament has been Smriti Mandhana with a bat in her hand. She sits at the top of the run charts with 142 runs, she has dragged India to the head of Group 1, and along the way she has quietly pushed past Harmanpreet Kaur and Mithali Raj to hold an India record that says plenty about how long she has been doing this. The only prize that has never come her way is the one India are chasing in England.
A record built over a decade
Mandhana’s 74 against the Netherlands at Headingley was her sixth half-century at Women’s T20 World Cups, one more than Harmanpreet and Mithali managed across their long careers. That is the most any India batter has reached at the tournament, and it landed in her seventh edition rather than in a single hot summer. For most of those years the World Cup was not where Mandhana did her best work. She arrived at this one with 524 runs in 25 innings at an average of 21.83, a record dotted with starts that never quite became scores and a top mark of 87 against Ireland in 2023.
That history is what makes the current run stand out. The fifties are not new for Mandhana, who has more than 30 of them in T20 internationals and sits second only to Suzie Bates on the all-time list for runs in women’s T20 internationals. Stacking them at a World Cup is the part that had been missing, and she is making up for it in a hurry.
The form of the tournament
The numbers behind the surge are stark. Mandhana’s 142 runs have come at an average of 71 and a strike rate above 150, a 68 against Pakistan followed by a 74 in Leeds where her fifty came up off just 36 balls. Babette de Leede of the Netherlands and West Indies wicketkeeper Shemaine Campbelle are within range on the run list, but nobody has combined volume and tempo the way Mandhana has at the top of India’s order.
She is not treating any of it as a peak. Asked about the back-to-back fifties, Mandhana said her best was still ahead of her, the kind of line that should worry the bowlers due to face her over the next fortnight. India have built both wins on the platform she lays in the powerplay, and as long as she keeps getting them away early, the middle order has been free to play without fear.
The one that keeps getting away
For all the personal milestones, the T20 World Cup remains the gap in Mandhana’s CV. India have never won it. They lost the 2020 final to Australia in front of a packed Melbourne crowd, fell in the semi-finals to England in 2018 and to Australia by five runs in 2023, and went out in the group stage in 2024. Mandhana has been there for most of the heartbreak.
What sharpens the storyline is what happened in the other format. Mandhana was vice-captain when India won the 50-over World Cup in 2025, so she knows how a world title feels. The shortest format is the one piece of silverware that has refused to follow. At 29 and in this kind of touch, the chances to put that right do not come around forever, and India have rarely looked better placed to give her one.
Top of their group with two wins from two, India are into the business end of the tournament with their best batter peaking at the right moment. The records are piling up regardless. Whether they finally arrive alongside the trophy Mandhana wants most is the question the next two weeks will answer.