WPL 2026 : Smriti Mandhana’s 96 Powers RCB Thumping 9 Wickets Win Over DC

The 90s curse of the Women’s Premier League 2026 (WPL 2026) struck again as Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) captain Smriti Mandhana missed out on a hundred during Match 11 of the tournament on Sunday, January 18, at the Dr DY Patil Sports Academy in Navi Mumbai. Smriti Mandhana played a sublime innings of 96 (61) against Delhi Capitals, helping her team register a comprehensive eight-wicket victory.

Outside the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai, among the replica merchandise sold by roadside vendors, Smriti Mandhana’s Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) jersey is the most visible. RCB flags are waved around to draw in buyers, often even on days when the team is not playing. More recently, jerseys with Richa Ghosh’s name have joined the racks too.

Inside the stadium, the cheers for RCB at times drowns out the support for the local side, Mumbai Indians. Through the Navi Mumbai leg of WPL 2026, RCB have not only enjoyed support that resembles a home crowd, but have also performed like a team playing at their home ground, making the most of the conditions to win all four of their matches. In the last game at the venue this season, against Delhi Capitals (DC), they finished with authority, giving their passionate fans what they came for.

Coming into the game against DC, Smriti Mandhana had been struggling to find her tempo this season, with timing eluding her and starts going to waste. Against DC too, she did not begin fluently. She was beaten outside off by Marizanne Kapp second ball as she attempted a big shot. Her first boundary came through a pull off Lucy Hamilton that sailed over square leg despite Smriti Mandhana not quite being in control of the shot, but in the same over came a familiar sight: a drive through backward point.

From there, she took control of the chase, with “RCB, RCB” chants growing louder as fans sensed the possibility of a first-ever WPL hundred. That moment did not arrive, with Smriti Mandhana falling four short of the landmark, and the crowd fell quiet as she walked off disappointed.

Still, the innings meant more than Smriti Mandhana finding form. She had spoken about making a conscious effort to hit more sixes this season without sacrificing timing, and she ticked that box too. Her big hits were on display: she hauled Nandani Sharma’s slower ball over midwicket, pulled Hamilton with authority, and stepped out to launch Minnu Mani over long-off.

The opening batter struck 13 fours and three sixes during her knock before being caught at point by Lucy Hamilton. It was the highest score of Smriti Mandhana’s WPL career, as she became the tenth player to be dismissed in the 90s in the tournament’s history.

Interestingly, no batter has managed to score a century in WPL history, with the tournament now in its fourth season. Sophie Devine and Georgia Voll hold the joint-highest score in the competition, with both batters having scored 99. While Devine was unfortunately dismissed on 99 in the inaugural season, Voll was left stranded on the score in 2025. Smriti Mandhana stitched together a massive 142-run partnership for the second wicket off 91 balls with Georgia Voll (54* off 42) after her opening partner Grace Harris (1 off 4) was dismissed cheaply.

Pitch Report and Toss

Pitch Report : Chasing sides have enjoyed greater success in Navi Mumbai, winning five of the nine matches played here so far, including MI’s successful chase of 193 – the highest in this edition so far.

That trend was briefly bucked when RCB successfully defended 182 against the Giants – the first time in five games at the venue that a team batting first emerged victorious. With the surface offering value for strokeplay early on but slowing down as the game progresses, captains may continue to prefer chasing, while totals in excess of 170 remain firmly in play. reckons Kate Cross and Stacy-Ann King

Toss : RCB Women skipper Smriti Mandhana won the toss and chose to bowl first with 3 changes in the playing XI bringing in Georgia Voll, Prema Rawat and debutant Sayali Satghare in for Linsey Smith, Dayalan Hemalatha and Arundhati Reddy. DC Women skipper Jemimah Rodriguez batting first handed debut to Lucy Hamilton in the Playing XI.

Shafali Verma’s solid 62 and debutant Lucy Hamilton’s breezy 39 of 13 balls powers DC Women to 166

Stumps continued to cartwheel at both ends as Delhi Capitals, inserted into bat, suddenly found themselves staring at 10 for 4 – the lowest score at the fall of the fourth wicket in WPL history. Sayali Satghare needed only two deliveries to join the destruction, enticing DC captain Jemimah Rodrigues into dragging one onto her stumps.

The RCB debutant then produced arguably the ball of the match when she angled her first delivery to Marizanne Kapp, drawing the South African into playing for the angle before the ball straightened just enough to kiss the off-stump.

Playing her first WPL season, Bell has been a revelation for RCB with the new ball. She began with a short ball which Lizelle Lee pulled with disdain through backward square leg. But next ball, she speared in a swinging yorker on leg stump. Lee’s weight was on the back foot expecting another short ball and was bowled behind her legs. Two balls later, Bell got through Laura Wolvaardt’s bat-pad gap to castle her for a two-ball duck. Having bowled outswingers till then, Bell got one to nip back in from a length and had Wolvaardt play down the wrong line.

From the other end Satghare, brought in for Arundhati Reddy who was unwell, produced a double-strike of her own. Her Mumbai team-mate Jemimah Rodrigues greeted her by scooping her for four through fine leg first ball. But Satghare shifted the line to outside off and got it to move in a little. Rodrigues went for the dab but chopped it onto the stumps. On the very next ball, Marizanne Kapp could do little about a length ball that held its line and hit top of off. DC were 10 for 4 in the second over.

While the damage was being done at the other end, Shafali watched helplessly, having faced just the one ball – the first of the game. When her turn to take strike came in the third over, she shimmied down the track and missed a length ball. She looked to pull another but only got an under-edge. She mistimed a double towards midwicket before punching one off the middle of the bat to end the over. That got her going.

Shafali then hit two sixes in the next over from Satghare, followed it with two more fours in the fifth over. She had scored 30 of the 41 DC had after five overs, and was well set by the time Shreyanka Patil came on to bowl. She saw Niki Prasad being dropped on Patil’s first ball, and then got an outside edge for four. When her turn to take strike came, she went dot, six, six to help take 19 from the last over of the powerplay.

DC were 60 for 4 after six overs, but Shafali faced only four balls in the next four overs. She soon got to a 27-ball half-century and fell for a 41-ball 62 when she scythed a Bell slower ball to backward point.

Shafali Verma found her way out of that wreckage in the only way she knows, with furious aggression that saw the Capitals race to 60 by the end of the PowerPlay, 42 of them blazed from her blade. First she launched into full balls from Satghare, dispatching a pair of sixes over long-off that made her the first player in WPL history to reach 50 maximums in the competition. A 19-run assault on Shreyanka Patil to close the fielding restrictions gave DC hope that they might yet offset their nightmare start.

RCB struck back soon enough when leg-spinner Prema Rawat trapped Niki Prasad LBW on umpire’s call. Nadine de Klerk then removed Minnu Mani in the next over as DC slumped to 74 for 6. None of it troubled Verma at the other end, who raced to a 27-ball half-century with the kind of inevitability that defines her best work. Sneh Rana hung around for a 34-run partnership before she too was cleaned up by Rawat. Bell returned to dismiss Verma for 62 at the start of the 17th over, and at that stage, DC appeared destined for a sub-150 total.

But against the run of play, WPL debutant Hamilton conjured a superb cameo, plundering 17 runs off another Shreyanka over to muscle DC well past 160. As it turned out, even that late flourish wasn’t anywhere near enough.

Smriti Mandhana’s 96 and Georgia Voll’s 54 powers RCB Women’s 4th straight win by 9 wickets

RCB’S  eight-wicket dismantling of Delhi Capitals was clinical in every sense. If there had been any grumble from their opening trio of victories, it was that their skipper  Smriti Mandhana hadn’t truly announced herself at the crease. Tonight, she emphatically struck that concern from the record with an innings of sublime strokeplay.

Kapp had dismissed Grace Harris five times in 24 innings before Saturday, and that seemed to play on Harris’ mind. She looked tentative against the new ball, a single coming via an inside edge off Kapp. The DC allrounder got the better of Harris when she toe-ended a loft to wide mid-off. That brought Voll, who came in the XI for D Hemalatha, in at No. 3. While she took her time, Smriti Mandhana was at her fluent best.

Even after Grace Harris departed early, even as Georgia Voll struggled to find her rhythm, RCB barely felt the squeeze of the required rate because Smriti Mandhana kept caressing boundaries with an elegance that suggested she was barely trying.

Delhi lost their chance to derail the chase in just the second over when they declined to review an appeal after Mandhana missed a pull against Hamilton. Either side of that let-off, the RCB captain pierced the field with precision to set the scoreboard humming. Even with RCB managing a modest 37 in the PowerPlay, Smriti Mandhana never flinched. Right after the PowerPlay, she unwrapped a pair of boundaries against Sree Charani, then two more against Sneh Rana as she glided to a 31-ball half-century.

Smriti Mandhana hit three fours – two pulls and one square drive – in Hamilton’s first over, then a four and a six off Kapp and Nandani Sharma respectively. Despite that RCB could manage only 37 for 1 in six overs. Smriti Mandhana then toyed with spinners N Shree Charani and Sneh Rana, getting back-to-back fours against each of them and got to fifty off 31 balls. She relied more on placement than power. Once Mandhana fell, Voll got to her half-century off 41 balls and sealed the win.

From there, she simply continued conducting her symphony of stroke-making. Voll eventually shook off her slumber to join the melody, and together they wove a 142-run partnership that rendered the chase almost ceremonial. When Smriti Mandhana finally fell, agonizingly short of her milestone, the equation had already been reduced to little more than arithmetic. RCB sauntered home with 10 balls to spare.

Smriti Mandhana and Voll added 142 for the second wicket, the third-highest partnership for any wicket in the WPL, setting the tone for the Vadodara leg, which starts on January 19.

Presentations and Road Ahead

Jemimah Rodrigues the losing DC Women skipper said : (on her feelings when Smriti was on 96) Nothing much actually, I just wanted, you know, to get her wicket, obviously, but I think she batted really well and credit goes to her today for the way she played, but an outstanding catch by Hammo, yeah. (on the fightback from 10/4) 100%, I think from 10 for 4 for Shifu to bat the way she did.

And I think what I liked about her was that she still kept being positive, she still kept playing her game in spite of wickets falling and to finish off small, small partnerships and Lucy Hamilton on her debut, I mean, that was outstanding. (on Hamilton) To be honest, I knew she could bat, but I’ve never seen her bat the way she did today.

I mean, it was crazy. It was crazy the way she, you know, the thing I loved about her was she was so calm under pressure, even in her first game. So I think she chose her options well and she ended up getting our team to a decent score, fighting score, I would say.

(could she have done anything differently in the chase?) Yeah, I mean, there are always those moments, you know, you think about it. But yeah, maybe, maybe I could have got in Kappy earlier to get her a wicket. But yeah, I think, I think the way Nandni also bowled was good.

So yeah, I think we just go back, we have to work a lot more on our bowling and yeah, come back stronger. (on their next game) I think we have nothing to lose now. We are just going to go all out and do whatever it takes to help us win.

Smriti Mandhana  Player of the match for her 96 runs and the winning skipper said : It was amazing to see the way everyone bowled, especially in the first three overs to get them four down. Sayali coming in as a debut and getting those two crucial wickets and then Bell doing what Bell does the best. But again, I mean, the way Shafali was going, she was looking really good and then we changed our plans and tried to bowl, give her a single.

And I feel everyone really executed their plans well. (on their bowling) I mean, we had definitely… Anya Shrubsole has been on it. She’s an experienced player and has played so much. So, of course, those planning and all of those things are coming together. And then in the strategy timeout we knew that Shafali is the only batter who could do that damage and get them to 180 plus.

So it was clear that we have to bowl our best balls to her and try and get her off the strike. And it’s easy to just say that, but everyone just went ahead. Prema bowled well, Radha bowled well and everyone whoever came in in that phase bowled extremely well today. (on her knock) Yeah, it was good. I mean, chasing a total is something which is a lot easier than setting up because as a batter, you don’t know what’s good enough, especially on wickets like these.

So when they got 160-odd and we lost Grace, I knew which bowlers I have to take on and which bowlers I have to respect. So, yeah, again, small little things you do, but some days it works, some days it doesn’t in T20 and I’m happy that it worked today for us and we won the match.

(is this your best 11?) Yeah, for sure. I mean, the first three matches also, we definitely won it, but we thought we are one batter short and Voll coming in at number three fits in really well. And yeah, unfortunately today, Aru was unwell. So if that swap happens, I mean, that would be the best 11 for us.