For seventeen years, one number sat at the top of women's international cricket like a fixture nobody expected to move: 10,868. That was Mithali Raj's tally, built across Tests, ODIs and T20Is from her debut in 1999 to her retirement in 2022. On September 3, 2026, in a Group A fixture of the Women's Asia Cup at Dubai International Stadium, Smriti Mandhana turned that permanence into history in the space of 64 balls.
The Innings
India had been sent in to bat against Hong Kong China. What followed wasn't a chase for a milestone so much as a demolition that happened to contain one. Mandhana walked back for 124 off 64 deliveries — 14 fours, seven sixes, a strike rate of 193.75 — before being run out in the final over. It remains the highest score of her T20I career and pushed India to 193/5. Hong Kong never recovered: they were bowled out for 56, with Deepti Sharma taking 3/9, handing India a 137-run win and an early spot in the semi-finals.
The record fell almost as an aside. In the 18th over, facing Ruchitha Venkatesh, Mandhana hit a hat-trick of sixes that took her tally to 10,880 international runs — twelve clear of Raj's mark. She said afterward that she had no idea at the time what she'd just done, only realizing the scale of it once she was back in the dressing room.
Why One Innings Broke Three Records
What makes this innings unusual isn't just the runs record — it's that Mandhana dismantled three separate benchmarks in a single knock, something that essentially never happens in a 20-over format:
All-time leading run-scorer: Mandhana now tops the list, twelve runs clear of Raj. The pace of the achievement is arguably more striking than the number itself — Mandhana reached the mark in roughly 300 innings, close to a third fewer than the 333 it took Raj.
| Rank | Player | Country | International Runs |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Smriti Mandhana | India | 10,880 |
| 2 | Mithali Raj | India | 10,868 |
| 3 | Suzie Bates | New Zealand | 10,740 |
| 4 | Charlotte Edwards | England | 10,273 |
| 5 | Stafanie Taylor | West Indies | 10,007 |
Runs across Tests, ODIs and T20Is combined, as of September 3, 2026.
Leading century-maker: The same knock was her 18th international hundred, moving her past Meg Lanning and Laura Wolvaardt, who had been tied at 17. Mandhana had actually already matched Lanning's mark back at the 2025 ODI World Cup; Dubai is where she pulled clear.
Highest score in Women's T20 Asia Cup history: Her 124 eclipses Chamari Athapaththu's unbeaten 119 for Sri Lanka against Malaysia in 2024, and is also the highest score by an Indian in a Women's T20I.
It was also only Mandhana's second T20I hundred — her first came against England at Nottingham in 2025 — which makes her the second Indian woman after Harmanpreet Kaur to score a T20I century, and now the only one with two.
The Symbolism Wasn't Lost on Anyone
Mithali Raj's response to losing her own record set the tone for how the moment was received. On X, she wrote that it was "well deserved," that she'd watched Mandhana grow from a young player into one of India's finest batters, and that seeing her overtake the record was something she was "genuinely proud of." Mandhana, for her part, named both Raj and Lanning as the players she'd grown up idolising and tried to learn from.
That exchange matters more than it might look. Raj's 10,868 runs weren't scored in front of packed stadiums or during broadcast windows — a large share of her career predates the WPL, predates the current level of visibility for women's cricket in India entirely. She built the runs record in relative obscurity. Mandhana broke it in a tournament being live-streamed and scrutinised the way men's cricket has been for decades. The record changing hands is also, in a smaller way, a marker of how far the visibility of the women's game has shifted in the gap between the two careers.
Where This Leaves Her
Mandhana turned 30 in July 2026. She's India's vice-captain, a two-time WPL-winning captain, and now holds both the runs record and the centuries record simultaneously — a double that, in the men's game, only Sachin Tendulkar has managed. She isn't at the end of a career arc; on the numbers, she's still accelerating. Days before the Hong Kong game, she'd already moved past Suzie Bates into second place on the all-time list — meaning she broke two positions in the same week before breaking the top spot itself in the same match she broke the centuries record.
The honest caveat here is the one that applies to every "greatest of all time" conversation in a sport that keeps expanding its calendar: more matches are being played now than at any point in Raj's era, which makes cross-era run-tally comparisons useful but imperfect. That doesn't diminish what happened in Dubai — it just means the next chapter of this record is likely to move faster than the last one did.
Gameonfield's Stump Mic
Records in cricket usually fall quietly, buried in a scorecard footnote weeks after the fact. This one didn't — it happened live, in real time, in front of a player who has spent her career being compared to the woman she just overtook. Mandhana didn't chase the record down over a long, deliberate innings; she stumbled into it mid-assault, three sixes into an over, without even realising what she'd done. That's arguably the most fitting way for this particular baton to change hands: not with ceremony, but with the kind of fearless batting that has come to define the sport's current era.
Mithali Raj built the record in the shadows. Smriti Mandhana broke it in the spotlight. Between those two facts sits the entire story of how far women's cricket has travelled in less than two decades — and Mandhana, at 30 and still climbing, looks far from finished writing the next chapter of it.
Key Takeaways
- Smriti Mandhana is now women's cricket's all-time leading run-scorer with 10,880 international runs, twelve clear of Mithali Raj.
- Her 124 off 64 balls against Hong Kong China broke three records in one innings: most runs, most international hundreds (18), and the highest score in Women's T20 Asia Cup history.
- She reached the runs record in roughly 300 innings, close to a third fewer than the 333 it took Raj.
- Mandhana now holds both the runs and centuries records simultaneously — a double only Sachin Tendulkar has managed in the men's game.
- Mithali Raj publicly congratulated Mandhana, calling the achievement "well deserved."