Ee Sala Cup Naamdu: RCB Spinners Mow Down Delhi Capitals as WPL 2024 Trophy Comes to Bengaluru

Royal Challengers Bangalore’s age-old mission – ‘Ee Sala Cup Naam De’ was finally accomplished on Sunday night. The dream which remains unfulfilled for the men’s team in the IPL was achieved by Smriti Mandhana & Co with their maiden Women’s Premier League (IPL) title win. RCB scripted history at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in New Delhi as they defeated Delhi Capitals by 8 wickets, becoming the new WPL champions.

The victory was so delightful that former RCB men’s team captain Virat Kohli made a video call to Smriti Mandhana to congratulate the women’s brigade. Meanwhile, others had a blast amid the fireworks and the light & sound show at the venue.

WPL Final: DC vs RCB – HIGHLIGHTS

A total of 113 would have never been enough to win a big final on a track that has maintained to be slow throughout the second half of the tournament. Meg Lanning & Co had earlier bullied the opposition with their batting firepower but coming to the season finale, they were completely on the mat. 8 out of 11 batters scored in single digits while 3 of them couldn’t even open their accounts. And in the end, they were all left teary-eyed.

The night belonged to RCB and a crowd of 29000+ cheering loud for them probably won’t them sleep for several nights to come. As they say, ‘Slow and steady wins the race’ and RCB applied the same formula to bring the cup home. Instead of smashing from the word go, they relied heavily on smaller partnerships. Mandhana and Sophie Devine added 49 runs to the opening wicket while a partnership of 33 runs each for the second and third wickets ensured an easy win for the Royal Challengers. With 3 required off as many deliveries, Richa Ghosh smashed a boundary off Arundhati Reddy’s bowling to begin the party in the RCB camp.

Delhi were out of contention right after the end of their first Powerplay, surrendering themselves to Bangalore’s spin attack. The RCB used as many as seven bowlers in the game but it was the spinners who brought them solace after Delhi’s blistering start. The trio of Shreyanka Patil, Sophie Molineux and Asha Sobhana shared 9 wickets among each other, folding DC to a paltry 113 in 18.3 overs.

WPL 2024 – FULL COVERAGE | SCHEDULE | RESULTS | POINTS TABLE | ORANGE CAP | PURPLE CAP

After opting to bat, Skipper Meg Lanning and Shafali Verma went all guns blazing to accumulate 61 runs in the Powerplay. Anything between good length and full was whacked out of the park by Shefali, sparing none of the RCB’s fast bowlers. She had hammered more sixes than boundary in the first six overs while Lanning was gradually catching up.

But the WPL has previously seen the complexion of a game taking an awestriking turn after the timeouts and the finale was no different. The spinners came into play while the pacers were no more required. Molineux busted the DC top-order with three prized wickets in the 8th over. Her first victim was Verma who holed out to Georgia Wareham at deep-midwicket. Jemimah Rodrigues and Alice Capsey fell on consecutive deliveries, both getting clean bowled on a duck after offering mindless shots.

The tweakers were now picking up wickets in bunches. After Molineux did her job, Sobhana’s double attack in the 14th over further paralyzed Delhi’s batting. A tossed-up leg break resulted in Marizanne Kapp’s demise who top-edged straight to Sophie Devine. A delivery later, Jess Jonassen was undone by Sobhana’s wrong’un and DC, who were 61 for no loss, found themselves reeling at 81 for 6. Surprisingly, it all unfolded after the second strategic time-out.

RCB’s pick of the bowlers was Patil who ended up grabbing the Purple Cap with a tally of 13 wickets in 8 matches. She came into the picture trapping Meg Lanning in front and then dismissed Minnu Mani in the same fashion in the 17th over. She wrapped the DC innings with back-to-back wickets of Arundhati Reddy and wicketkeeper-batter Tania Bhatia, returning 4 for 12 in 3.3 overs which was also the third-best bowling figures of the season.

Brief Scores:

Royal Challengers Bangalore 115/2 [Ellyse Perry 35*; Shikha Pandey 1/11] Beat Delhi Capitals 113/10 [Shafali Verma 44; Shreyanka Patil 4/12, Asha Sobhana 2/14, Sophie Molineux 3/20] by 8 wickets.