The final of the second edition of the Women’s Premier League took place yesterday afternoon UK time. The two teams to make it there were Delhi Capitals who had qualified by the direct route of topping the league stage, and Royal Challengers Bangalore who had had to go the long way round.
THE DELHI CAPITALS INNINGS
Aussie legend Meg Lanning and Indian star Shafali Verma opened the batting for Delhi, and they got away to a flier, scoring 61 from the six overs of Power Play without being separated. The seventh over stemmed the flow, and then the match took a dramatic turn in the eighth over – 64-0 becoming 64-3 in the space of four balls as Verma’s explosive innings ended caught in the deep, and then Jemimah Rodrigues and Alice Capsey both scored ducks. Ten runs later came a crucial moment as Shreyanka Patil pinned Lanning LBW, a decision that was sent upstairs in sheer desperation but confirmed as being out. The floodgates were well and truly open now for the RCB bowlers, and the scorecard soon read 87-7, at which point Radha Yadav and Arundhati Reddy offered a little resistance, ended by the run out of Yadav who had become only the third player of the innings to reach double figures. Patil completed the rout with the scalps in very quick succession of Reddy (the fourth and last double figure score of the innings) and wicket keeper Taniya Bhatia, to give her four wickets for the innings and put her at the top of the wicket takers list for the tournament. At high water mark Delhi Capitals had been 64-0, and they ended up all out for 113 – all ten wickets going for 49 runs. Other than the run out every wicket went to spin bowling – Molineux’s three that started the rout, Patil’s four and two for leg spinner Asha Sobhana.
THE RCB CHASE
RCB have had an IPL franchise since that competition started in 2008 and have never won the competition, and RCB women had not won only previous edition of this tournament. It was only the fact of RCB’s status as serial non-winners that could cause anyone to view of a chase of 114 as other than a formality, and in the end it was exactly that. Yes, victory was only achieved in the final over, but of greater significance than the exact time at which the winning run was scored was that RCB lost only two wickets, and were never really struggling with the run rate – the nearest they came to being so was when they need 29 from the last four overs, but the two batters together at that stage, Ellyse Perry, an Aussie legend to rival even Lanning, who only a few days earlier had shone with the other side of her game, becoming the first ever to take a six-wicket haul in a WPL game, and Richa Ghosh (India’s current first choice keeper, though she is rather more accomplished with the bat than with the gloves) stayed calm and took their side to a well merited victory. Sophie Molineux, whose triple wicket burst interrupted Delhi Capital’s momentum and changed the course of the match was named Player of the Match. Uttar Pradesh Warriorz and India off spinning all rounder Deepti Sharma was named Player of the Tournament. The Player of the Match award was unquestionably correct – statistically Molineux was outdone by Shreyanka Patil, but it was Molineux’s burst that derailed the Delhi Capitals when they appeared set for an enormous score. A full scorecard can be viewed here.
PHOTOGRAPHS
I have a splendid photo gallery – the first bees of the year are out and about, and not only did I have another sighting of the Brimstone Butterfly, I also got another butterfly, a Comma…
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