11pm That's all we have for you tonight then. The points table is looking good for this tournament, three teams tied on four points. We'll have Shashank's report up here very soon if you missed the action today, and tomorrow is Delhi Capitals vs Mumbai Indians. That's all from me, Vishal Dikshit, and Srinidhi then, stay safe you all. Ciao Ciao!
Good to see more women than men for a WPL presentation...
Ash Gardner gets two awards but not a microphone yet. Ok, here she is, also the Player of the Match: Over the last couple of games we didn't bat the way wanted to. Credit to the bowlers tonight, particularly TK (Tanuja Kanwar) and Kashvee. Chasing a low total also gives you the freedom to play your shots and be positive. It's really nice, that first game we should have won (against RCB). But that's cricket, people can outplay you. Today we quietened the crowd, which people want to do here. It's just the trend of the WPL for now (of chasing), without much dew. The game against DC there was a lot of seam movement so it was a challenging wicket. But today was a lot nicer and flat. We've seen different conditions and now we're off to Lucknow where I've not played before. We want to get better at the powerplay with bat in hand, today we lost just one wicket. Earlier we lost four and it's hard to come back from that. Pleased to see how the batters went about their job. We're trying to reset and our bowlers are doing a fantastic job and we wanted to keep putting up wins on the board.
10.48pm A slightly close loss to Mumbai Indians, a Super Over loss to UP Warriorz and now a thrashing against the bottom-placed Gujarat Giants. It's not looking too good for RCB right now, although they have one home game left, but against a solid-looking Delhi Capitals. We'll bring you the winning captain and Player of the Match soon, it could be the same person.
Litchfield: We came in today as positive group and after the past two games we wanted to come in with a bang. Helps that Ashy won the toss and the bowlers did well. It's kind of what happened to us in the powerplays and we put pressure on them today while bowling early on. Ash did an amazing job to get that skin rate down to six in that over and I could score freely and risk-free, and we could get that partnership. To be fair to Ash, the catch she dropped was in the big light down there but thank god Bharti broke the stumps down. We needed a win to stay in it, looking back at the first game against RCB, we were one or two catches short. Hopefully we'll grab the momentum from today.
Smriti Mandhana: I don't think we batted well in the powerplay, including myself. We tried too hard and didn't read the conditions well. We tried to get 170-180 but the wicket was a lot different than the other games. (Third loss in a row) the first two games we still played well but ended up losing, but today's loss will really hurt us because of all three departments. But we have to take it and we have to take these things in our stride. All three departments we want to improve, not just one. As a team we all have to step up, last three games we haven't played our best game and need to come back stronger. (On Kanika Ahuja and Raghvi Bist) they've done well in domestic cricket. Kanika missed out last year and Raghu has a really good head on her shoulders.
10.37pm Handshakes and beaming smiles break out in the Giants dressing room while the RCB players bring out the handshakes with dejected body language because they've lost their third game in a row, and all at home. They're still third on the table, Giants are still bottom of the table but these two and UP Warriorz in between have the same points now - four. Giants on the other hand have ended their losing streak to get their second win and their season doesn't look all that bad now. They will be chuffed that the credit for tonight won't go to Gardner alone but the other bowlers as well - both quicks and spinners - who nailed the yorkers, brought out the pace variations, and kept the runs down in the end.
Nishant: "GG get this done quickly and improve your NRR"
Virag: "@Amit - thats a litle harsh on RCB, they lost some extremely close games including a super over. I dont think that is really letting the fans down.."
Scores are level
