Surat, Oct 4: Harmanpreet Kaur on Friday became the first Indian to play 100 T20 International matches. Harmanpreet, who captains India in the shortest format of the game, turned up for the team in their sixth T20I against South Africa in Surat on Friday to achieve the milestone.

Harmanpreet Kaur is among 10 female players who have reached the three figure mark in terms of appearances. New Zealand's Suzie Bates and Australia's Ellyse Perry top the list with 111 appearances. Harmanpreet herself is tied with Pakistan's Bismah Maroof and West Indies' Stafanie Taylor with 100 appearances.

The Indian female player closest to her is Mithali Raj, who retired from T20Is in September, with 89 appearances. Jhulan Goswami with 68 appearances comes next and she had retired in August 2018. Veda Krishnamurthy with 63 appearances is the closest to Harmanpreet among active Indian cricketers.

Overall, Harmanpreet has two more appearances in T20Is than MS Dhoni and Rohit Sharma, who have played the highest number of matches for India in men''s cricket.

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Mumbai (PTI): The Reserve Bank on Wednesday expectedly kept interest rates unchanged amid hopes of a global recovery on the back of ceasefire in the six-week-long US/Israel-Iran conflict.

The policy decision comes as a month and a-half-long West Asia conflict has disrupted energy supplies, shot up crude oil prices and created fiscal and inflationary pressures for import-dependent nations like India.

This is the first monetary policy review after the government announced a fresh inflation target for the RBI last month. The government has asked the RBI to maintain retail inflation at 4 per cent with a margin of 2 per cent on either side for another five years ending March 2031.

Announcing the first bi-monthly monetary policy for the current fiscal, RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has unanimously decided to retain short-term lending rate or repo rate at 5.25 per cent with a neutral stance.

The rate cut pause comes on the back of the consumer price index (CPI) based headline retail inflation that moved closer to the RBI's medium-term target of 4 per cent at 3.21 per cent in February.

Additionally, the rupee has depreciated by over 4 per cent since the war, which has consequences for pushing up import inflation.

However, the rupee has appreciated by 50 paise to 92.56 against US dollar following announcement of the ceasefire by the US and Iran.

Based on the recommendation of the MPC, the RBI reduced the repo rate by 25 bps each in February, April, and December 2025 and 50 basis points in June amidst easing retail inflation.

India's retail inflation dropped to a historic low of 0.25 per cent in October 2025, marking the lowest level since the Consumer Price Index (CPI) series was introduced.

However, the rupee declined to historic low and crossed 95 against a dollar last month making imports costlier, raising fears of rise in inflation. Rupee touched a record low of 95.21 on March 30, 2026.