Harmanpreet Kaur Becomes First Indian Cricketer To Play 100 T20I Games, Leapfrogs MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma

On Friday, the skipper of the Indian National Cricket Team in the shorter format of the game Harmanpreet Kaur becomes the first Indian cricketer to play 100 T20I games for the national team. On her way to 100 T20I games, she even beats the likes of MS Dhoni, Rohit Sharma, and Virat Kohli, who are playing the game for a while now.

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Till date, no other Indian player apart from Harmanpreet has played 100 T20Is. Next on this list comes Indian legend MS Dhoni with 98 T20I appearances while India men’s ODI vice-captain Rohit Sharma follows is also tied with Dhoni on 98 caps. With MS Dhoni being unavailable, Rohit got a good chance to become the first men cricketer to play 100 T20I games for India.

Harmanpreet Kaur entered 2000-run club as well:

Kaur made her debut against England in Taunton back in June 2009. The all-rounder has taken 27 wickets and scored 2,003 runs at an average of 28.61 so far in T20Is. The Board of Control For Cricket In India (BCCI) took to Twitter to post a video where the head coach of the team WV Raman presented a special cap to the Indian skipper.

The Indian captain achieved the feat in the final T20I of the six-match series. She was also the youngest woman to be named the Indian T20I captain, apart from being the first from the country to play an overseas league as well as hitting a century in the shortest format in international cricket.

A special cap for captain @ImHarmanpreet to mark her 100th T20I for #TeamIndia #INDvSA ??????? pic.twitter.com/Sp6KFUca9o

— BCCI Women (@BCCIWomen) October 4, 2019

On the whole, New Zealand’s Suzie Bates, Australian Ellyse Perry, and Pakistan’s Shoaib Malik lead the pack with 111 T20I appearances each. While Malik is the only Male to have featured in 100 T20Is, 10 women have now played 100 or more shortest-format games for their respective countries.

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The Indian female player nearest 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.