Smriti Mandhana: The journey to Rs 3.4 crore that started at age 9

The most expensive buy of Women's Premier League auction, Mandhana's rise to the top was inevitable

Looked at in one way, there seems to be a certain inevitability to Smriti Mandhana’s rise to the top of the women’s cricket echelon.

At nine, she was picked to play for the Maharashtra Under-15 state side. Two years later, she was fast-tracked into the Maharashtra U-19. Her talent was so unignorable that her father and first coach Shrinivas decided to put her in the more qualified hands of Anant Tambwekar, a junior state coach at the time. 

At a time when most kids were being chastised by their parents to study hard, go to school and then hit the