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Smriti Mandhana wins hearts as she responds to young Kashmiri fan, post goes viral: ‘Give little champ a big hug from me’

In the Instagram post, filmmaker Kabir Khan shared that he met a girl in Kashmir’s Aru Valley who expressed love for her favourite cricketer Smriti Mandhana.

3 min readNew DelhiDec 23, 2025 02:24 PM IST

The moment unfolded when filmmaker Kabir Khan shared a series of photos from his visit to the Valley. (Image source: @kabirkhankk/Instagram)

Indian cricketer Smriti Mandhana is winning hearts with her heartwarming gesture for a young female fan from Kashmir. The moment unfolded when filmmaker Kabir Khan shared a series of photos from his visit to the Valley.

In the post, Khan shared that he met a girl in Aru Valley who expressed her love for Mandhana, calling the Indian women’s team vice-captain her favourite cricketer. One of the photos shows the girl playing cricket.

“Walking with my camera in Kashmir always rewards me with magical moments. Like this little girl in Aru who wanted me to tell @smriti_mandhana that she is her favourite player. I hope Smriti gets to see this post. Or the boys whose playground has a mountain stream as the boundary. If you hit a 6 the ball will flow all the way down the valley into the Jhelum river,” Khan captioned the post.

See the viral Instagram post here:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kabir Khan (@kabirkhankk)

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The post quickly gained traction, garnering over a million views and prompting a reaction from Smriti Mandhana herself. “Please give the little champ in Aru a big hug from me and tell her I’m cheering for her too!” the cricketer commented.

Several users also reacted to the post, with one saying, “Mr Khan you will be remembered as the ambassador of peace and humanity! It’s sad that those terms are an aline concept in the time we are in…but love and peace always wins! Keep doing what you do.” Another user commented, “Bajrangi Bhaijaan 2 please.”

Meanwhile, Mandhana recently spoke about the importance of positivity and “shifting focus” while appearing on the Humans of Bombay podcast. Reflecting on how people often let setbacks overshadow progress, she highlighted the need to look beyond a single negative moment.

Sharing her perspective, Mandhana said, “One negative thing that happens that ruins your day…if you lose a match, we always see that we have lost it, but there are lots of positives in that loss also.”