From Heather Knight to Sophie Devine: Top 3 performers for RCB against Gujarat Giants

In what seemed like a pulsating encounter where the Royal Challengers Bangalore fought till the very end against the Gujarat Giants, the end result is something that would bother Smriti Mandhana and co. as they are still to bag that opening victory of the WPL.

Seeking redemption against the Gujarat Giants, as fate would have it, the bowlers once again went for a few runs that left the RCB batters with a ginormous ask. Not bowing to the extraordinary requirements of the equation, the Challengers showed grit and gumption with the bat and eventually would fall 11 runs short of the stipulated requirements. Here are the three best performers for RCB against Gujarat Giants.

Heather Knight – 30* (11) and 2/17

When it felt that Gujarat will pile up something more than 220 on the cards with Ashleigh Gardner and Dayalathan Hemalatha rocking the shores, the English captain would chip in with a double whammy bagging both their prized scalps. Following up on her heroics with the ball, Knight powered a late surge, hammering a crucial 30 from just 11 balls, propelling RCB to close vicinity of what was the stipulated ask. Heather would go onto smack five fours and a six but in the end would eventually fall short.

Sophie Devine – 66 (45)

Just when it felt that there was the lack of a big knock that really bothered RCB, Sophie Devine, the former Kiwi skipper, managed to hammer the first half-century of the WPL for the Challengers as she braved her way through a bag of challenges, carefully knitting a rampant knock that saw the bowlers being clubbed to the boundaries. She hammered 8 fours and 2 sixes before Annabel Sutherland sent her back to the pavilion.

Shreyanka Patil – 2 for 32 and 11* (4)

There was a point when Gujarat were simply running away with it and there seemed barely any scope whatsoever for the Challengers to turn things around. However, it was Shreyanka Patil who sent back two set batters in the form of Sophia Dunkley and Harleen Deol, with the latter’s stumps in absolute shatters courtesy of a terrific yorker. In the end, she would bring out the heavy artillery too, as she rocked Annabel Sutherland for a couple of boundaries in the final over, providing hope for what can very well be the light at the end of the tunnel that RCB was so desperately looking for.