Women's Cricket
WPL: Perry's heroics confirms RCB's place in the final for the first time
Royal Challengers Bangalore registered a close 5 run victory over Mumbai Indians in a nail biter eliminator in WPL.
RCB women's team into the final of WPL after a close win (Photo credit: WPL)
The second season of WPL keeps on getting better as it went into another last-ball thriller at the eliminator, on Friday, when Royal challengers Bangalore knocked out Mumbai Indians at the packed Arun Jaitley Stadium to book a place in the final for the first time.
Explosive Aussie all-rounder Ellyse Perry was the player of the match after her miraculous inning of 66 runs and a crucial wicket of MI opener Yastika Bhatia.
The openers Smriti Mandhana and Sophie Divine entered the stadium with an attacking intent generating 14 runs in the first over of Shabman Ismail to set the pace but Mumbai made a quick comeback to take three wickets in a quick period and applied breaks to their innings.
Then came Perry, and tried to steadied the RCB innings. She continued her solidification, watching her partners leaving one after one, and then did a late flourish in the end with some help from Georgia Wareham to post a good total of 135-6 in 20 overs.
Perry is now also leading the race for the Orange Cap with 312 runs in eight matches.
Mumbai Indians started their innings very comfortably and reached the spot of 50 for 1 in just 7.5 overs but then Ellyse Perry again came in to rescue the team and bamboozled the sumps of opener Yastika Bhatia to put some doubts in the MI camp.
MI quickly recovered from this setback after a 50+ partnership between captain Harmanpreet Kaur and Amelia Kerr. They were looking comfortable to book their back-to-back final ticket with just 20 runs needed and two set batters on the crease.
In the 18th over, Smriti took a gamble and asked Shreyanka Patil to come back on the bowling mark instead of experienced fast bowler Renuka Singh and the decision proved decisive as she took a crucial wicket of Harman and just conceded four runs.
Sophie Molineux repeated Patil in the 19th over with 4 runs and a wicket and now all goes down to the final over of Asha Sobhana.
An Indian domestic bowler puzzled the two experienced international stars, Amelia Kerr and Pooja Vastrakar to defend 12 runs in the final over and stunned the defending champions by just 5 runs to give her team a place in the final.
RCB will now take on home favourites Delhi Capitals in the summit clash on 17th March at 7:30 PM IST at the same venue.
