The night RCB lost for the third time in a row and went winless in their homecoming as reigning champions, they were far from playing their best cricket. “It’s hard but having said that, as captain, you’d rather lose close games than one-sided ones because you know you were not that far off.”
In retrospect, Smriti Mandhana’s remarks during the toss were a horrible premonition of what Royal Challengers Bengaluru and its boisterous home audience would face on Thursday.
Her Gujarat Giants counterpart, Ashleigh Gardner, was unapologetically quick to start the home team. At the beginning of WPL 2025, chasing had already become a popular strategy in Vadodara, and captains felt confident enough to use it when the caravan relocated to Bengaluru.
The fast bowlers were helped by favorable circumstances, while Deandra Dottin and Kashvee Gautam, more significantly, dazzled RCB’s renowned top three with a masterclass in swing bowling. Danni Wyatt-Hodge was just off a fifty on her most recent outing when she was smacked low on the pads in front of her leg by an inswinging yorker. Ellyse Perry, who had been leading RCB’s batting with three fifties in four prior appearances, had a rare failure and her first WPL duck in the next over after mistiming a pull to square leg off Gardner.
The 21-year-old Chandigarh pacer then delivered two tight overs, declaring Mandhana her bucket-list wicket. In the 11 deliveries she bowled down to Mandhana to put her under pressure, Gautam helped it with nine dots, including one off a free-hit, but she was unable to remove the RCB captain. A combination of inswingers and outswingers repeatedly battered the left-hander, who was troubled by the late movement. Over the course of two overs, Gautam’s swing ranged from 1.3 to 1.9 degrees, leaving the RCB opener without any answers or runs. The outcome was that Mandhana tried to escape with a slog-sweep but was dismissed by Tanuja Kanwer in the next over.
With their batting pillars back in the hut at 25/3 in the last PowerPlay over, RCB realized they had already been outplayed on a slow and worn surface. They counterattacked in the middle overs, which was also their strongest scoring phase, but as the game went on, the 125 they pushed and huffed their way to would never be enough because the conditions were getting easier for batting.
Since GG had been in those situations before, they might be able to relate. Gardner & Co. entered this rematch against RCB on the heels of two losses following a high-scoring opening night encounter between the two teams. They followed a similar pattern, batting first and losing four early wickets during what was perhaps the ideal time for speed bowling. Long before the winning runs were scored, the game was already decided in the first six overs of the match. Their powerplay scores in the two games were 28/4 and 31/4, and their final totals were 120 and 127/9.
Despite losing to the unsettling pattern three times in a row, RCB hasn’t had bad hitting performances overall until now. Or at least it didn’t appear like a total disaster thanks to the Perry-inspired comebacks. The Australian all-rounder helped RCB finish with 167 and 180 after rewriting her personal best WPL score twice in a row, against the Mumbai Indians and UPW, respectively, with scores of 81 and 90*. On both occasions, poor preparation and execution in the final overs caused the game and points to slip out of their grasp in the final seconds of the match.
Both Perry and RCB have experienced those situations in earlier losses.
In WPL 2025, a team has only successfully protected a total once out of every 12 games played. With a bizarre knock, Chinelle Henry turned the tables on the Delhi Capitals and gave her team, the UP Warriorz, a score that was marginally higher than expected given the circumstances. The only team that came close to protecting a total next was RCB, but Sophie Ecclestone’s outstanding death-overs hitting once again forced the match into Super Over.
In the recently opened Kotambi Stadium in Vadodara, where dew had a significant impact in addition to peaceful batting tracks, chasing teams won all six games. It’s interesting to note that, in the absence of any interfering dew component, five out of six Bengaluru matches have followed the same trend.
The Bengaluru tracks, which have essentially restored the bat-ball balance, have been largely responsible for this. The bowlers have had enough early buy on each of the three alternating wickets used in the WPL at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium so far to keep the batsman off balance.
Teams who bat first, like RCB has done in each of their three games here, are evaluating new situations as they go along and calculating par totals almost in real time. The outcome has been either slow and cautious starts followed by catch-up or too many early wickets in the PowerPlay trying to go too hard. However, once Perry fell victim to PowerPlay against the Giants, RCB lost its savior and gave up its lowest total of the year.
Despite being aware that the hosts were outplayed in both areas of the game, RCB assistant coach Malolan Rangarajan dismissed the lopsided loss to the Giants as “the one bad day at office.”
“This is the one game that appears in every season and tournament. And the fact that this is the third [in a row] loss is just bad timing right now. For the first two games, you might tell a different tale. However, I firmly think that the group has been handling the difficulties we’ve had this year rather admirably.
“And given the somewhat erratic circumstances that exist here… The pitch was a little slower today, but the previous game’s 180 looked excellent [as a total and was almost guarded]. Therefore, simply attempting to comprehend the conditions has been difficult. However, our ability to attempt to evaluate the situation as best we can has been our strength.
Here at Chinnaswamy, the playing field has been level. It is not as focused on tossing as Vadodara. You could tell how we played even though the outcomes were as they were. We took the game to the final over and scored 160 and 180 in the previous two games. And they didn’t exactly chase it with ease.
“Very different from Baroda, where I believed the toss was crucial because of the moisture and the batting-friendly pitch. Chinnaswamy has improved significantly and is now more consistent with the bat and the ball. However, I can’t think of a specific explanation for why pursuing teams [are winning]. Today, however, it’s quite easy. I can say that there wasn’t enough on the board today. We were outplayed today.
Malolan’s hypothesis that, except from today, RCB hasn’t performed all that poorly with the bat as a team is supported by the fact that their three consecutive losses haven’t significantly affected their position in the points table, their positive NRR, or their prospects of reaching the knockout stages. Perry has been leading the charge, but Wyatt-Hodge just two nights ago, Richa Ghosh and Kanika Ahuja in the record pursuit on the first night, and Mandhana’s bats versus DC have all had an impact. For this reason, RCB rejects the notion that their batting is mostly dependent on the top run scorer in the league.
Perry has been being really irascible. Considering what she has accomplished, I believe she has not been batting like a typical cricket player. Once more, individuals are concerned about the fear of likelihood. We’re not. We believe in the entire batting unit a bit too much. Contributions have come from the batting order. Unfortunately, Perry’s style of batting has given the impression that she is over-relying, as it has been an inhumane effort on her part. We don’t feel overly dependent, though. In actuality, Perry has been outscoring the entire league in addition to the RCB players.
Before they say goodbye to their home with mixed feelings this season, RCB has one more game, which might be a make-or-break match versus DC. And they have to go deep, both physically and figuratively, in just 36 hours if they want to remain relevant in the playoff calculations.
India
