Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma rack up 4,080 opening runs in 107 T20I innings

Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma have combined for 4,080 runs as India’s opening pair in women’s T20 internationals across 107 innings since 2019, and after Mandhana was named India’s white-ball captain with Shafali as her deputy on October 6 they are due to face the first ball together when India plays Zimbabwe in Raipur from October 16.

Ball-by-ball records of every women’s T20I through October 7 show the partnership has yielded 4,080 runs — about 50% more than the next best pair — at an average of 39.2 runs per dismissal and a scoring rate of 8.34 runs per over, with the dataset drawn from Cricsheet (cricsheet.org).

The Mandhana–Shafali combination has posted 32 opening stands of 50 or more, 12 more than any other pairing, and shares the record for six century partnerships; Australia’s Alyssa Healy and Beth Mooney are second on 2,715 runs from 84 innings and the UAE’s Esha Oza and Theertha Satish third with 2,588.

Compared with other established opening pairs, the typical partnership among 31 pairs with at least 20 innings averages 26 runs per dismissal at under seven runs per over; England’s Danni Wyatt and Sophia Dunkley score at 8.23 an over but average 28, while South Africa’s Laura Wolvaardt and Tazmin Brits average 44.4 runs per dismissal but score at 6.85, and Oman’s opening duo (over 20 innings) are the only pair ahead of Mandhana–Shafali on both average and run-rate.

The Smriti–Shafali pairing has altered Mandhana’s scoring rate: with Mithali Raj she opened at 7.07 an over, while with Shafali she scores at 8.34; the Indian pair survives 28 balls per wicket against 25 for other established pairs and produces more than 1.5 runs per over extra, a split the underlying table attributes roughly seven of the 11 additional runs per wicket to increased speed and four to longer survival.

The advantage is clearest in the powerplay, where the pair score 8.4 runs an over versus 5.8 for other openers — about 15 extra runs across six overs — with boundaries on 22.7% of balls, roughly double the rate of other opening pairs; 26% of their stands reach six overs compared with 23% for others, and bowlers dismiss them at a similar frequency to other strong pairs.

Their form has fluctuated by year: a drop to 7.04 runs an over in 2023 was followed by a surge since January 2025 when the pair averaged 48 runs an innings at 9.27 an over, up from 34 runs at 7.91 an over beforehand, and their 973 runs in 2026 are the most they have scored in a calendar year.

India have won 60 of the 100 completed matches in which Mandhana and Shafali opened together; win rates vary sharply with the size of the opening stand — 51% when the pair add fewer than 20 runs, 50% for stands of 20–49, and 24 wins from 29 matches (83%) when the opening partnership reaches 50 or more. In 18% of their innings both players were out for under 15, while in 65% of innings at least one scored 30 or more, and over their last 15 innings Shafali’s strike rate exceeded 170 and Mandhana’s exceeded 150, both career highs for any 15-innings stretch.

The underlying records use legal deliveries to calculate run rates and exclude ties and no-results from win figures, the ball-by-ball dataset runs through October 7 from Cricsheet, and Kapil Gupta is listed as an Assistant Professor of Decision Sciences and Operations Management at IIM Kozhikode; the Zimbabwe series in Raipur from October 16 will be the first occasion these newly appointed leaders open together in a bilateral series and will show whether the leadership change alters their tempo.