India opener Smriti Mandhana, following her match-winning century against New Zealand in the first One-day International at Napier, said that she was pleased to have converted her start into a big score.
Mandhana smashed a 104-ball 105 – her fourth ODI hundred – and shared a 190-run stand with fellow opener Jemimah Rodrigues (81*) to script a comfortable nine-wicket win for the visitors at Napier.
“I have a thing of getting out in the 70s and 80s, so I had to talk to myself, ‘don’t hit any rash shots, don’t hit any lofted shots, just play in singles and doubles’. I’m really happy with that aspect,” said Mandhana.
“I was able to stick in and guide the team through. Again, if I’d scored three runs I would have been a lot happier,” she said, referring to her dismissal when three runs were needed for a win for India.
New Zealand were bundled out for 192 with spinners Ekta Bisht and Poonam Yadav taking three wickets apiece.
The classy southpaw felt that the McLean Park surface was good for batting. “Initially we just played according to the merit of the ball,” Mandhana said. “We just had to react to the ball, because they had good pacers. The plan was to see how the new ball was doing.
“This was the first time we were batting in New Zealand, and we didn’t really know. We watched a bit of the men’s match and also how the first innings went. So, we decided to just keep it simple, play according to the merit of the ball,” she said. A day earlier, Virat Kohli’s side cantered to a eight-wicket win against the Blackcaps at the same venue.
A confident Mandhana said her team would have been able to chase down a much bigger target than what New Zealand had set. “The way we were going, I think we would have been able to chase 280-300,” she said.
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