Chandigarh,<\/p>\n
Indian batting star Smriti Mandhana has smashed the joint-fastest half-century in women\u2019s T20 cricket. Playing for Western Storm against Loughborough Lightning in KIA Super League, England\u2019s flagship T20 tournament for women, Smriti reached her 50 off just 18 balls in a rain-hit match in Taunton today. Smriti ended up with an unbeaten 52, having struck five fours and four sixes off 19 balls. Smriti reached her 50 with a six. The match was reduced to six-overs-a-side due to rain. Smriti\u2019s knock powered Western Storm to 85\/2 in 6 overs, and Loughborough Lightning could manage only 67\/0 to lose by 18 runs. In her debut for Western Storm, Smriti had struck a 20-ball 48 against Yorkshire Diamonds on July 22. She followed that up with a 21-ball 37 against Surrey Stars on July 26. Before today, the record for the fastest 50 in women\u2019s T20s belonged solely to New Zealand\u2019s Sophie Devine, and now Smriti co-owns it.<\/span><\/p>\n Hindi calls<\/p>\n The 22-year-old Smriti had given her teammate Heather Knight, the England captain, some Hindi lessons in her debut match last week.\u00a0 \u201cShe was struggling to call in English, so I asked her to tell me what \u2018yes\u2019 was in Hindi,\u201d Knight said. \u201cIt was a bit hard for me to call out in English, because we are used to calling out in Hindi, so I was telling her \u2018Haan\u2019 is yes. So she was like, \u2018Don\u2019t worry, I\u2019ll run for that!\u2019,\u201d Smriti said.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m not sure I\u2019ll be wanting to do it (learn a new language) every week,\u201d Knight joked later. \u201cBut if I can learn \u2018yes\u2019 and \u2018no\u2019 in Hindi and help Smriti bat there in the middle \u2013 because she got off to a great start for us \u2013 then that\u2019s great!\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Chandigarh, Indian batting star Smriti Mandhana has smashed the joint-fastest half-century in women\u2019s T20 cricket. Playing for Western Storm against Loughborough Lightning in KIA Super League, England\u2019s flagship T20 tournament for women, Smriti reached her 50 off just 18 balls in a rain-hit match in Taunton today. Smriti ended up with an unbeaten 52, having […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37758,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37759,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37757\/revisions\/37759"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}