Straight OFF THE Bat

From being the Vice Captain of the India Women's National Cricket Team to the winning captain of the Women's Premier League squad, SMRITI MANDHANA has many facets to her colourful personality one being that she is an unabashed lover of rom coms. She gets candid with Shraddha Kamdar on how she keeps her eye on the ball

- Shraddha Kamdar

A nine-year-old kid who used to play cricket for the love of the game - those were four hours of the day that would fly by for her - little did Smriti Mandhana know the gravity of a statement she made to her mother: "Don't be so stressed, I will buy a house for us." Her middle-class mum was always worried since they lived in a rented home.

"I was just a child, but you know the feeling when you see your mother tense. I just wanted to take that tension away, to tell her to chill, let her know that I would provide what she needed," she tells Femina as we settle in for this interview on an early summer morning in Mumbai, a few days before she jetted off for training for the five-match T20 International series with Bangladesh last month.

That little kid in her lights up when she says, "When I did buy that house, I was proud of how much this game has afforded me. It was a satisfaction and joy that I can't describe" Since she considers herself pretty stoic, to experience such a surge of emotion was unusual for Smriti. She admits that she is still at a similar place in her mind and heart, whether after hitting a hundred or walking out at zero.

"Even when I received the phone call inviting me to play my international debut match, I was just like, 'Okay, thank you." She was 17 then, and anyone else would have jumped for joy, but that is just not the person she is. The point of departure from that matter-of-factness is the joy she felt from the satisfaction of doing something for her family, especially her parents. "We come from a very humble background," she reveals.