WPL 2026: RCB evades defeat in campaign opener, but what about questions on lineup choices?

If you turned off your television or stream at the halfway mark of Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s (RCB) chase against Mumbai Indians (MI) in the 2026 WPL season opener, one could hardly blame you for assuming an RCB loss. Pursuing 155, RCB openers Smriti Mandhana and Grace Harris got the side off to a flying start, but the innings unravelled quickly with a cluster of wickets, exposing the lack of frontline batting muscle in the line-up fielded at the D.Y. Patil Stadium.

Smriti’s microaggressions, visible from the deeper tier of the dugout, were adeptly captured by the broadcast cameras. At the same time, the collective blood pressure of the capacity crowd at the spiritual home of Indian women’s cricket rose and fell with the oscillating momentum of the contest.

Then, Nadine de Klerk happened and, as she has done for South Africa so many times, including at the recent ODI World Cup, she turned the game on its head.

“The game was seesawing throughout. We were dominant in the first half of the innings, but we also had ourselves to blame. Sajeevan Sajana played a good game, credit to her, but we did drop two catches, which turned the momentum. If you’d have given me 155 before the game, considering the history at D.Y. Patil Stadium, the scores here and the dew, I would have given an arm,” head coach Malolan Rangarajan admitted.

“Again, the value of all-rounders came to the fore. My blood pressure is okay. We’re used to this. I’ve been with RCB for six years,” he quipped.

The Smith-Voll choice

A masterclass in swing bowling from Lauren Bell, who allowed MI’s top order no room, helped RCB contain a home lineup stacked with big hitters. Yet, the 2024 champion puzzlingly opted for a bowling-heavy XI, despite pre-match intel suggesting a decently fertile red-soil strip that ultimately played expensive.

READ | Nadine de Klerk’s last-over heroics help Royal Challengers Bengaluru beat Mumbai Indians

England left-arm spinner Linsey Smith was handed new-ball duties alongside her compatriot Bell. She was nowhere near as unplayable as she had been at the World Cup, with 17-year-old G. Kamalini taking her on and breathing life into the MI innings after Bell opened with a stingy maiden. RCB eventually squeezed just two overs out of Smith. Meanwhile, leg spinner Prema Rawat, who would later see the chase through alongside de Klerk, never got the ball.

“At RCB, we’ve always fielded an overseas spinner. Think Charlie Dean, Georgia Wareham, Sophie Molineux. A lot of thought has gone into picking the eleven. We’re not rocking up one day before a game and picking teams. We back Linsey. She’s a world-class bowler and has recently won titles with the Northern Superchargers and Hobart Hurricanes,” Rangarajan explained.

The head coach also underlined why Prema made the cut over a frontline domestic batter like Gautami Naik, whose ballistic ability in tournaments such as the Maharashtra Premier League had earned Mandhana’s trust and, by extension, RCB’s.

“We could have played Gautami there, but we went with a player who’s been at RCB and is a gun fielder. Prema has been putting in a lot of work. She’s batted a lot in the last week or so. She’s what we call a coach killer with her batting. I’ve always valued characters and attitudes. Prema is a fighter. Quiet on the face of it, but inside she will fight and never give up. I am not surprised by the intent she showed in this game. Unfortunately, she didn’t get to bowl, but we were clear on our approach and who our backups were. We created chances with our existing bowlers.”

While Rangarajan defended the decision to sideline someone like Georgia Voll, the signs were plain to see that the Australian opener could be an automatic choice alongside Smriti at the top. She smashed a scintillating unbeaten 99 on debut last season against the very side whose colours she now dons. With Voll at the top, Grace Harris could bolster the lower order, something this game underlined with uncomfortable clarity.

The Perry vacuum

However, the head coach continues to see value in Harris’s bang-or-bust approach at the top.

“In the auction, we picked Voll in the first batters’ set. We got Nadine soon after. After losing Shikha Pandey, we knew what we wanted as an alternative. So we got Grace, Pooja Vastrakar and Arundhati Reddy for that amount.

“You can see the damage Grace did in the first three overs. The way we look at it is this. We want to let her bat as many overs as she possibly can and play the way she does. We don’t want to stop her. It takes pressure off Smriti too. There’s a lot of noise around the obvious player missing for us, Ellyse Perry. There are a lot of ways you can skin the cat. People want us to be batting heavy and we can do that. Or we can ask our existing batters to do the job. If it’s Grace, she goes in and does what she does best, takes the bowlers on and puts pressure back on the opponent.”

De Klerk’s rescue act

Despite all this, RCB found itself under the pump, turning a straightforward chase into a needlessly complicated one. The Indian middle order of Richa Ghosh, Radha Yadav and Arundhati Reddy faced a herculean task in stabilising the innings. Richa, usually reserved for finishing duties, was promoted to No. 4 but fell for a run-a-ball six. Radha, batting in a position familiar from her India A and Baroda roles, could not dig in and was bowled for a single. Arundhati stuck around with a cagey 25-ball 20, adding a vital half-century stand that allowed de Klerk to settle.

“Aru is a genuine all-rounder. She’s been batting very well and has a clear game plan. She knows how she can score runs. Today required her to buckle down and play. It was unfortunate how she got out. She’d have wanted to hit it further, but I can’t speak highly enough of how well she works behind the scenes.”

When Arundhati and Shreyanka Patil fell in the 17th over, RCB still needed 34 off 18, a scenario de Klerk has made a habit of owning. It did not begin smoothly, with no boundary coming off her first 10 balls.

“I was probably a bit frustrated at the beginning of my innings. Cricket is a funny game. You have to stay in and fight. Towards the end, I was thinking of taking a bulk of the strike. Arundhati batted beautifully and a couple of boundaries by Prema were very important,” de Klerk said as she walked away with the Player of the Match trophy.

“Walking into the first strategic time-out, I was speaking to Nadine. She was very clear with her plan on how to approach the next 11 overs. She wanted to chase down upwards of eight runs in the last four overs. There were also clear plans for how to approach the next few overs in blocks. I am a person who believes you make your own luck,” Rangarajan explained.

“From around the seventh over, she played right till the last ball. So, to call it a finisher’s job is a disservice,” he added.

That her four-wicket haul became something of a footnote tells its own story about the scale of her batting heroics at the death. Even so, RCB may want to find healthier ways to build a title challenge this season. Whether it does so remains the lingering question.

Published on Jan 10, 2026