Delhi Capitals seal berth in final after easy win over GG
NEW DELHI: Delhi Capitals ended the league phase of WPL 2024 with a commanding sevenwicket victory over Gujarat Giants at the Arun Jaitley Stadium here on Wednesday. The win seals Delhi’s berth in the final, having secured the top spot with 12 points in eight matches. Mumbai Indians will face Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Eliminator on Friday. Chasing 127, Delhi reached the target in just 13.1 overs with Shafali Verma leading the way with 71.
52 catches have been dropped and it is not just the Indian players who are to blame. The poor levels should be a wake-up call for a league that is still trying to establish itself. There really is no excuse for this. There is lot of talk about some interesting young Indian talent coming through, but the point should be to get the basics right. The same struggle has been seen in international cricket, but the professional WPL set-up should help bring more young players to a higher level.
A Lanning class
Beth Mooney scored 285 runs but the rest of the Giants batting line-up failed to fire. Tanuja Kanwar took eight wickets but no one else was among the wickets. Their collective failures have seen GG finish bottom of the table for the second season running -- ending on four points on both occasions. It doesn’t make for pretty reading and calls for change will be heard sooner rather than later.
And if they want to figure how to get things right, they only need to look at RCB. Mandhana’s team struggled last season but were determined to change things around this time.
“We couldn’t step up and play the cricket we wanted to play (last year). But in the last one year, a lot of thought has gone into this. A lot of hard work behind the scenes, not only from my side but all the support staff, and the RCB management,” said Mandhana after her team sealed a playoffs spot.
“You know, the only conversation they had was “this is your team, make it the way you want to”. That was really nice from their side to do that. I wouldn’t say that (this has been a) really satisfying campaign still, but we had a lot of ups and downs.”