Skipper Smriti’s poor form under scanner as holders RCB eliminated from WPL

Bengaluru: Royal Challengers Bengaluru skipper Smriti Mandhana blamed her team’s patchy performance in the last five matches for their early elimination from the Women’s Premier League (WPL) on Saturday.

RCB lost to UP Warriors by 12 runs in a crucial match where a win could have dragged the team’s playoff chances till their last game.

“The way we started, we thought, it will be a good season. But in the last five matches, we could not live up to the expectations we had for ourselves,” Smriti said after the match against UP. RCB sit at the bottom of the points table, with two wins from seven matches. On Tuesday, they will face Mumbai Indians (MI) in their last game, which has become insignificant. Meanwhile, UP ended their campaign with only 3 wins from eight matches, ending the season in the fourth spot above RCB.

In a high scoring match at Bengaluru, UP posted a mammoth 225/5, helped by remarkable innings from Georgia Voll, who scored an unbeaten 99 runs. RCB’s chase ended at 213 runs, with their main batters failing to deliver. Richa Ghosh made 69 runs to keep her in the game before the late fireworks from Sneh Rana, but it couldn’t help RCB cross the line. Rana scored 26 in just 6 balls, an innings comprising two fours and three sixes.

Mandhana praised the duo’s performance while also acknowledging that the team was inconsistent throughout their campaign. “We played some good cricket in some patches. But we could not live up to some moments,” she said.

The defending champions were let down by their batters this season. The bowlers did their job well in most of the matches, but defending low scores was challenging for them.

Australian Ellyse Perry was the star batter for RCB with 323 runs from seven matches and is also the leading run-getter in the tournament. Richa Ghosh is RCB’s second-best run-getter with 194. Meanwhile, Mandhana, the star batter in the team, had a disappointing season and failed to deliver at key moments, putting her teammates under pressure. She made 81 runs in RCB’s second game against Delhi Capitals, firing the team to a remarkable victory. But she only managed to score 63 runs from the remaining 6 matches.

This was the case with rest of the batters as well. Many were a one game wonder and scored a half century in one of the matches. Apart from Perry, no one batted consistently throughout the tournament, costing the team crucial matches.

RCB learned that inconsistency could not win them matches. “There were a lot of moments in matches where we could have won the game. Definitely a lot to take back from this season,” Mandhana said.