For more than a decade into her career, hundreds didn’t arrive as frequently to Smriti Mandhana as the quality of her batting suggested they should.

There were plenty of starts and fifties across countries and formats, enough to establish her among the best batters of her generation. But converting those innings into hundreds remained an area for improvement.

The last two years have changed that. Mandhana’s 124 from 64 balls against Hong Kong in the Women’s Asia Cup in Dubai on Thursday was her 18th international century, taking her past Meg Lanning for the most hundreds in women’s international cricket. During the same innings, she also went past Mithali Raj’s 10868 runs to become the highest run-scorer in women’s international cricket. Mandhana now has 10880.

It was also the highest individual score in Women’s T20 Asia Cup history, surpassing Chamari Athapaththu’s unbeaten 119 against Malaysia in 2024.

The two records coming on the same evening captured two different parts of her career: the consistency that took her past Raj and the improved conversion rate that carried her beyond Lanning. Mandhana made her international debut, aged 16, in 2013. Her first ODI hundred came three years later, a 102 against Australia in Hobart. Hundreds followed against West Indies in 2017, South Africa in 2018, New Zealand in 2019 and West Indies again in 2022.

Smriti Mandhana plays a shot against Hong Kong, China in the Asia Cup. (Credit: ACC)

But they remained occasional landmarks. Through the end of 2023, Mandhana had five ODI hundreds and 26 fifties. Of the 31 occasions on which she reached 50, only five were centuries – a conversion rate of 16.1 percent.

Then came a transformation. Mandhana had never scored more than one ODI hundred in a calendar year before 2024. She made four that year – 117 and 136 against South Africa, 100 against New Zealand and 105 against Australia. A batter who had spent years getting off to starts was now beginning to make them count.

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Mandhana followed those four hundreds with five more in 2025, when she made 1362 ODI runs. The left-hander made nine ODI hundreds in those two years, almost twice as many as she had managed across the first 11 years of her international career combined.

Across 2024 and 2025, nine of Mandhana’s 17 fifty-plus scores became hundreds – a conversion rate of 52.9 percent, more than three times her rate through 2023. Her overall ODI record now stands at 14 hundreds and 35 fifties.

The change is perhaps even more apparent in T20Is. Until the end of 2024, Mandhana had played T20Is for nearly 12 years and accumulated 30 half-centuries without reaching three figures. She had come close—87 against Ireland in 2023 and 86 against New Zealand in 2019—but a hundred kept eluding her.

That wait ended against England at Nottingham in June 2025, when she made 112 from 62 balls. A little over a year later, the 124 against Hong Kong became her second.

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The way the latest hundred came also showed how her game has evolved. Mandhana hit 14 fours and seven sixes and reached three figures from 57 deliveries. She struck three successive sixes in the 18th over, during which she went past Raj’s career aggregate.

India were playing Hong Kong for the first time, and Mandhana said the lack of familiarity with their bowlers meant they had to adapt in the middle, instead of relying on pre-match footage.

“We had seen a few videos, but not really aware. We’re playing them for the first time, so when you come against a bowler who you don’t know a lot, you have to just forget that you’ve played whatever cricket. You just have to go, watch the ball,” Mandhana said after winning Player of the Match.

Better strike rate

Her scoring rate has risen alongside her improved conversion rate. After striking at 126.53 in T20Is in 2024, Mandhana went at 135.85 in 2025. In 2026, she scored 579 runs at a strike rate of 145.84.

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For Mandhana, overtaking Raj and Lanning was significant. “Two of the legends of women’s cricket, Meg Lanning and Mithali Raj. Genuinely, these are the two people who I have grown up watching a lot, watched a lot of their cricket, and tried to take a lot of things from them as batters,” she said in the post-match press conference.

India vice-captain Smriti Mandhana in action. (X photo)

At 30, Mandhana has gone from a teenage prodigy to an established international opener and one of the most consistent run-scorers in the women’s game.

What has changed in the latest phase is what happens after she gets in. She has turned fifties into hundreds, while the runs have come quicker. The combination has taken Mandhana from chasing the records of Raj and Lanning to owning two of the biggest records in women’s batting herself.

And Mandhana’s own assessment suggested she does not consider Thursday’s achievements as an endpoint. “It’s just a start,” she said.