The players are in the middle. Devika will open with Healy, again, for Warriorz. Oh, it’s going to be a divine start for RCB. A slip in place
Santosh: “Eagerly waiting for smirti to come and score high. Let’s cheer for smirti and co.”
Playing XI:
BCR: Smriti Mandhana (capt), Sophie Devine, Ellyse Perry, Heather Knight, Richa Ghosh (week), Shreyanka Patil, Kanika Ahuja, Megan Schutt, Asha Sobhana, Renuka Singh, Disha Kasat.
UP Warriorz:: Alyssa Healy (ch., week), Devika Vaidya, Kiran Navgire, Tahlia McGrath, Deepti Sharma, Grace Harris, Shweta Sehrawat, Simran Shaikh, Sophie Ecclestone, Anjali Sarvani, Rajeshwari Gayakwad,
Alyssa Healy, UPW Captain: We would have bowled first too. Good opportunity for our hitters. Grace Harris replaces Ismail. We’ll go out there and give him everything we’ve got. I am proud of the team and we hope to do our best.
Smriti Mandhana, RCB captain: It’s a new wicket so we’ll bowl first and hope to make the total. Thanks to the fans for supporting us. We haven’t lived up to expectations, but the group is supporting each other. But doing it for each other is what we want to do. Kanika is back in shape, comes on for Preeti.
7:00 p.m.: RCB wins the toss and chooses to bowl
Ujjwal: “Happy 30th anniversary to the entire cricinfo team, hoping to get unrivaled coverage of your game for many years to come.” — Health 🙂
Ronak: “I really hope Dane van Neikerk has a game today. The team needs her more than Megan Schutt, so I hope RCB can make it happen today. Also, I look forward to seeing if Shweta Sherawat can make an impact today.” — – Who wouldn’t want to see van Niekerk in action? Since Schutt has taken only two wickets in four matches and has topped 9 races so far, RCB might be tempted to give van Niekerk a chance today.
ICYMI, Shashank Kishore has written about off-roading Shreyanka Patil’s rise through the ranks from Karnataka to RCB. “X factor player. That’s what I want to be. That’s what I train for. That’s what they have taught me to be. You have to be different, right? That’s how they make you notice,” she said during an interview with ESPNcricinfo.
Meanwhile, UP Warriorz captain Healy opens up in a chat with Vishal Dikshit, where he says that growing women’s football in India is our real job. Excerpts: “There’s a lot of talk about all the international players making all the runs and taking all the wickets, but what the UP Warriorz in particular have as a strength is that we have some really good Indian players within our team who are really going to shine at the right times, and our job as international players is to complement that and do our job where we can.”
Both teams are coming from losses, but more importantly, the team led by Smriti Mandhana is yet to achieve a win in this competition. Can they finally get it right against Alyssa Healy’s side? Warriorz won two of the four matches and will be eager to bounce back from their loss against Mumbai Indians in the previous outing.
For those asking if RCB can qualify for the last 16, yes they can. Despite having lost all five of their games so far, mathematically they can still finish in the top three. Here it is S Rajesh explains that if they win their last three games, it is possible that they could be in the top three without net run rates coming into play.
18:30: Hello and welcome to ESPNcricinfo’s live coverage of WPL Game 13. It’s RCB vs UP Warriorz on DY Patil. I’m Srinidhi Ramanujam and I’ll be joined by Ekanth as we bring you all the action live.