Smriti Mandhana touches career-best ranking points; holds third place in ICC rankings
Dubai, (PTI): India opener Smriti Mandhana has reached a career-best 741 points as she continues to maintain her third position in the latest ICC Women's T20I Player Rankings for batters released on Tuesday.
The Player of the Match in the second T20I against Australia, which ended in a tie before India won in the Super Over, gained 11 rating points to reach the landmark.
Australia's Tahlia McGrath is the new No.1 in the rankings following her superb performances in the first two matches of the ongoing series against India underway in Mumbai.
The 27-year-old Australian had unbeaten knocks of 40 and 70 and overtook compatriots Meg Lanning and Beth Mooney as well as Mandhana to become the fourth Australian and 12th batter to top the women's T20I rankings, according to ICC.
Mooney had been at the top since August 3 this year when she overtook Lanning.
McGrath is No. 1 after only 16 matches. The last woman to reach the top in fewer matches was West Indies' Stafanie Taylor in 2010 (15 matches) while India opener Shafali Verma has been the fastest in recent years, reaching the top ranking after 18 matches.
Two more India batters, Shafali and Jemimah Rodriques, also figure in the list of top-10 T20I batters, with the former gaining a spot to be at sixth position.
In the T20I ranking for bowlers, India's Deepti Sharma and Renuka Singh Thakur have maintained their third and fourth spots respectively, with England leg-spinner Sarah Glenn up one place to second behind compatriot Sophie Ecclestone.
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Confident we are going to win Kerala: Shashi Tharoor
New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday expressed confidence in the victory of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala, saying the Congress-led alliance will win more than 75 seats out of the total 140 in the state.
Tharoor, who hails from Kerala, said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls, most of which predicted a victory for the UDF that has been out of power for 10 years in the state.
"We have been on the ground. I have campaigned in 59 constituencies across 12 districts out of 14. I was very confident we are going to win.
"Everything that I have picked up from not just my party colleagues and workers but also from other observers, media and others have always convinced me that we were going to score a comfortable win of above 75 seats. And all the (exit) polls have confirmed the same thing," he told reporters here.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls but in general he was not a big fan of exit polls in India.
"Because ours is not purely a homogenous society. We have to take into account gender issue, caste issue, class issue, regional disparities. You never get a convincingly large enough sample to give an accurate poll and now there is the additional complication that we have heard about in West Bengal this year that many people are unwilling to answer the questions of the pollsters," he said.
The Congress leader said normally, it used to be below 10 per cent that people said that they would not answer.
"Even if you are a reputable exit pollster, in Bengal, one polling company has said 60 per cent of people refused to answer. So, what is the worth of a poll where 60 per cent of your respondents have not answered," he said.
Several exit polls on Wednesday predicted a comeback by the Congress-led UDF in Kerala after 10 years, dethroning the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF).
Polling for the 140-member Kerala assembly was held on April 9. Results of assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Puducherry, besides Kerala, will be announced on May 4.
