“How she does, how she plays, and how she captains are just another level over here,” RCB’s Heather Knight backs under-fire Smriti Mandhana
After the loss, RCB's star Heather Knight talked about how the first five defeats spoiled their games and later, backed under-fire Mandhana who has a season to forget.
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Smriti Mandhana' Heather Knight
The Smriti Mandhana-led Royal Challengers Bangalore had a horrible campaign in the inaugural Women’s Premier League (WPL). After losing five consecutive matches, they tasted victory in the next two games, then ended their campaign yesterday when Mumbai Indians defeated them in their last match.
After the loss, RCB’s star batter Heather Knight talked about how the first five defeats spoiled their games and later, backed under-fire Mandhana who has a season to forget. Knight said Mandhana has to handle a lot of pressure due to the expectations from the fans.
“Even as England captain, the pressure she is in is so much more, the amount of people interested in seeing how she does, how she plays, and how she captains are just another level over here,” Knight told the media after the match.
“[How] you play is how you want the team to play and we will certainly see a stronger Smriti coming back. When she combines her captaincy with her batting she will be very hard to beat,” the English skipper added. In the eight matches, Mandhana scored just 149 runs at a paltry strike rate of 111.19 and an average of 18.62. She failed to score a single fifty in the tournament, with her highest knock being 37 against Gujarat Giants.
RCB vs MI match recap
RCB were already kicked out of the tournament when UP Warriorz defeated the Gujarat Giants on March 20. They were heavily dependent on the Warriorz’ defeats by a huge margin. But as that did not happen and RCB ended their playoffs hope, they wanted to end their campaign with a win.
But Harmanpreet Kaur-led Mumbai Indians did not let that happen. After another failure from the batting department, with Ellyse Perry and Richa Ghosh scoring 29 each, through huff and puff they managed 125/9 in their 20 overs. And with Yastika Bhatia’s 30 and Amelia Kerr‘s unbeaten 31, Mumbai Indians chased down the target in 16.3 overs to win the match by four wickets.
Mumbai Indians were enjoying the top spot of the points table since the start of the league but they were dethroned by Meg Lanning-led Delhi Capitals on March 21. The Capitals outclassed UP Warriorz by five runs to become the first finalist of the WPL 2023. The final will be played on the 26 March, but before that Mumbai Indians and UP Warriorz will square off against each other on Friday (March 24) to meet Delhi Capitals in the summit clash.
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Gouri Das
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