Opener Smriti Mandhana set the tone for India with her sublime batting as she became the first Indian woman to hit a hundred in the Pink-ball Test when she reached the three-figure mark on Day 2 of the one-off Test against Australia women in Queensland. This is the also first century by an Indian woman on Australian soil.

Mandhana peppered the off-side field repeatedly with some gorgeous shots to reach her maiden Test hundred off 171 balls against Australia on Day 2. Mandhana was forced to wait for her maiden hundred on Thursday when the rain forced early stumps on the opening day of the Pink-ball Test against Australia at Gold Coast.

Earlier on Thursday, Mandhana revealed that she familiarised herself with the pink ball by keeping one in her kit bag for the last three months, looking at it on and off while trying to ‘understand’ it.

The idea to keep the coloured ball around her worked well for the stylish player, who was batting on a sublime 80 when inclement weather brought an early end to the opening day of their historic Test, against a formidable Australian side.

“We just had two sessions with pink ball. I was coming from the Hundred (in England) so I didn’t really get much time to play with pink ball, but during Hundred, I just ordered a pink kookaburra ball, just to keep it in my room because I knew that there is going to be a Test match, so that I can just look at the ball and understand,” said the 25-year-old.