RCB captain wins ICC Women's ODI Cricketer of the Year 2024

Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) captain Smriti Mandhana has been named ICC Women's ODI Cricketer of the Year 2024. The India left-hander had a stellar run with the bat in ODIs in 2024.

She was a touch above everyone else, amassing 747 runs in 13 ODIs in 2024 at an average of 57.46 and a strike-rate of 95.15 with four hundreds and three half-centuries to her name. Smriti also ended the year as the leading run-getter in the format, leaving big names such as Laura Wolvaardt (697), Tammy Beaumont (554) and Hayley Matthews (469) behind.

Her four hundreds in the year is also a new record she set in the women's game. In June 2024, she set the tone with successive hundreds in India's 3-0 series victory against South Africa. She also scored a century each against New Zealand in October and Australia in December.

Smriti played attacking cricket at the top for India, striking 95 fours and 6 sixes in ODIs in 2024, thus finding the boundary over a hundred times with the bat. Her highest score of 136 came against South Africa during the second T20I in Bengaluru in June 2024.

Opening the batting, she smashed 136 runs off just 120 balls, scoring 18 fours and a couple of sixes at a strike-rate of 113.33. She also scored 117 runs in the first ODI of the same series.

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Smriti Mandhana tops run-scorers' charts in ICC Women's Championship (ODI)

The ICC Women's Championship is the ODI table that will decide the qualifiers for the ICC Women's World Cup in 2025. India's Smriti Mandhana, on the back of her sensational run with the bat in the format in 2024, is also at the top of the run-scorers' charts in the ICC Women's Championship.

The left-hander has accumulated as many as 1358 runs from 24 matches at an average of 59.04 and a strike-rate of 96.10 with five hundreds and eight fifties. Only two other batters - Laura Wolvaardt (1234) and Chamari Athapaththu (1088) have over 1000 runs in this list.

Overall, Smriti has played 97 ODIs for India so far and has notched up 4209 runs at an average of 46.25 with 10 hundreds and 30 half-centuries.