"Initially, when tennis was developing as a sport, there were comparisons made between the serve rates of different players. Now it has reached a point where Serena Williams is appreciated just as Roger Federer is in his own right. It’s time for cricket to also reach that place."
Smriti Mandhana is an Indian international cricketer and the vice-captain of the Indian women's national team. She was part of the Indian team that won the 2025 Women's Cricket World Cup, the Women's Asia Cup in 2016 and 2022. She also won a gold medal in the 2022 Asian Games, and a silver medal in the 2022 Commonwealth Games representing India.
"The efforts of those who played before us, and all of us put together as a community, have now made this possible. Imagine those ex-women cricketers, who even without getting much 30 or 40 years ago, continued to play. They made our present reality possible"
"I don’t like the comparison between men’s cricket and women’s cricket"
"It’s just a different game. You don’t have to put us in the same category."