WPL 2024: Royal Challengers Bangalore Find Renewed Batting Template in Clinical Win Over UP Warriorz

After starting the tournament in dominant fashion with two victories in two matches, the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) head into their final match at the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium after being dented two matches in a row against Delhi Capitals (DC) and Mumbai Indians (MI).

A key factor that led to their downfall in both matches was the Powerplay batting. Against DC, chasing a monumental 195 runs for victory, the hosts found themselves 52 for 0 after six overs.

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While on paper the score does not look too bad, the reality was 45 of those runs had come from the bat of skipper Smriti Mandhana, while Sophie Devine had contributed a mere six runs. Devine tried to cut loose soon after the slow start, but a few overs later fell trying to force the issue further and was out for 23 runs. The required run-rate at the end of the over in which she fell had risen from the initial asking rate of 9.7 to 10.5.

In the following game, batting first, RCB found the going tough against MI, who were disciplined with the ball and in the field. The Powerplay score read 34 for 3 and the possibility of the hosts reaching a total they could compete with looked slim.

Heading into the last match of the Bengaluru leg on Monday, change had become the need of the hour. A third straight loss heading to Delhi would have meant a possible must-win situation in each of the three matches at the Arun Jaitley Stadium.

Sabbhineni Meghana had emerged as one of the finds for the hosts in the first leg of the tournament and on Monday, she got a full 20 overs to show what he could do from the word go. The decision to promote paid dividends as the right-hander and Mandhana set RCB on their way, reaching 56 for 1 after six overs. By scoring 28 runs in 21 balls, Meghana had done her job and ensured RCB had a start to work around with, heading into the middle phase of the innings.

The fall of Meghana’s wicket saw Ellyse Perry walk in at three and Mandhana took over the mantle of being the aggressor and in her own elegant, eye-catching way the southpaw drove the RCB innings forward. If you were a fan of watching timing over power, silk over slaughter then you might have paid as much as your pockets weighed and put all the money into watching Mandhana in full flow on Monday.

No spinner threatened her in the mood that she was in as she took the aerial route with such relative ease that it almost became her default option with fours and sixes flowing from her bat.

“When I came into the game today, I was really focused. The last two losses hurt us a lot. We wanted to express ourselves regardless of batting first or second. More than the orange cap, I am really happy that we could get 190+. It’s still game one, we have to bowl well. The wicket was holding a bit, we backed ourselves to go for our shots. That was the chat in the dressing room,” Mandhana said after the first innings play on Monday.

At the other end, Perry was playing the perfect foil to her skipper, milking the singles and twos and stroking the occasional boundary in between to ensure RCB never felt the pressure in their innings.

After 15 overs, the duo had taken RCB to 129 for 1. The foundation for the final launch to their innings had been laid. The players, support staff and the roaring fans watched in expectation to see if Mandhana could get to her first WPL century. That, however, did not turn out to be the case as the left-hander fell for 80, trying to clear a ball over the fence.

But as if she had transferred her powers to the batter in the middle while leaving for the dugout, it was Perry’s turn to take on the bowling and she showed why she had been rated as highly for such a long period of time, by scoring boundaries and sixes at will and even breaking the glass of the display car with one of her sixes.

The key to Perry’s batting is the lack of follow-through of her bat and the excessive use of the bottom hand. Her strokes through the leg-side are clean whips and on the shorter boundaries of the Chinnaswamy, all a batter has to do is to find a gap and watch the ball smash the boundary.

All this meant that at the end of the 20 overs, RCB had recorded the highest total of the second edition of the tournament. That had happened due to a renewed batting template which they would hope serve them well in Delhi.