Royal Challengers Bengaluru went from title-winners in last year’s WPL, to eliminated before the knockout stage this year. Here’s what went wrong.
RCB started this edition strongly with a 202-run chase against Gujarat Giants. Their power-packed batting lineup looked ready to fire again, despite the failures of both openers in that opening game. Richa Ghosh, fresh from her school exams late last year, blasted a match-winning innings, scoring 64 off 27 balls. While she took the plaudits, Ellyse Perry set the tone for another individually record-breaking competition with her first half-century of three more to come in the edition.
After that sensational start, another win followed four days later, against tournament favourites Delhi Capitals, no less. This time it was their bowlers who shone, Renuka Singh Thakur leading a four-pronged attack that bowled Delhi out for 141. Most important was the neutralisation of Delhi’s imperial top four, Meg Lanning, Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues and Annabel Sutherland all sent back by the middle of the 11th over of the innings. The combination of arguably the best seam-bowler in the world in Renuka Thakur, combined with the Australia duo of Kim Garth and Georgia Wareham looked a mighty force to be reckoned with.
However, since that match, RCB failed to register another win in the tournament until it was too late, and were knocked out in a must-win game against UP Warriorz when they conceded a record 225 runs. Here’s why their tournament unravelled despite such a promising start.
Opening partnership failure
Having swapped from UP Warriorz to RCB after spending the tournament on the sidelines last season, Danni Wyatt-Hodge came in before Sophie Devine withdrew from the competition. Devine’s impact was minimal last year, thus bringing in Wyatt-Hodge was a move to strengthen RCB’s opening partnership alongside Smriti Mandhana.
However, while Wyatt-Hodge made decent contributions with a 33-ball 42 in the win over Delhi and a half-century in a tie against UP Warriorz, she did not find the consistency to reliably underpin a functioning batting unit. It’s a similar story with Mandhana, who had an exceptional year in 2024 to finish in the top four of the competition’s run-scorer list. Compared to the 300 runs she scored in 2024 at an average of exactly 30, her returns this year were less at 197 runs at an average of 24.62. While those numbers can’t be described as definite failures for either opener, they are short of what’s needed to mount a title-winning campaign and exacerbated by difficulties in the middle order.
Middle-order marquee-player dependence
Even by her own standards, Perry has had an outrageous tournament. Having finished as the leading run-scorer in last year’s tournament, she scored even more runs this time around, with four half-centuries including two 80-plus scores and a ridiculous tournament average of 93.00 at a 148.80 strike rate. Alongside her, Richa Ghosh also excelled in her role as middle-order blaster.
However, with an underperforming opening partnership and sporadic contributions from the rest of the middle order, the consistency of putting big runs on the board didn’t come together. When individuals fired, the run-scoring capability of that lineup was on full display, see the 199-3 in their final match of the tournament, and the 213 in a loss against UP Warriorz, as well as their early victories. But without that consistency through the middle of the tournament, leaving too many runs out in the middle cost them in crucial games.
Weakened bowling attack
RCB suffered a trio of devastating losses to their bowling attack before the tournament. Shreyanka Patil, Asha Sobhana, and Sophie Molineux - the three highest wicket-takers in last year’s competition - were all ruled out of the tournament before a ball was bowled this year. Those wickets were hard to emulate in their absence, particularly from spinners. While Georgia Wareham was their biggest contributor in the wickets column, she conceded her runs at almost nine an over. Their next highest wicket-taker among spinners was Sneh Rana, who took six wickets across five games.
The absence of those key spinners meant that even when RCBmanaged to get high totals on the board, they didn't have the bowling depth to match, relying too much on Wareham and Thakur. A key example of this was in their second match against UP Warriorz where, despite UP smashing a record 225 runs, RCB managed to get within touching distance, scoring 200 plus for the second time in the season.
Key moments and bad luck
There’s an element of fine margins in RCB’s elimination. They came out on the wrong side of two of the closest finishes of the season, in a super-over against UP Warriorz and a tight chase against Mumbai Indians. Against UP, they reduced them to 139-8 in a chase of 180, before Sophie Ecclestone and Saima Thakor smashed 41 runs off the last three overs. It was the second time they loosened their grip in the competition, having let MI off the hook in a 170 chase having had them 82-4 inside the first 10 overs.
Those matches will go down as missed opportunities for RCB, who could have finished tied on points with third-placed qualifiers Gujarat had they won just one of them. Equally, losing twice to last-placed finishers UP Warriorz meant they couldn’t afford to lose the matches they did against the best teams in the tournament.
Mixed in with that were definite elements of bad luck, starting with the three spinners they lost before the competition began. They also lost every single toss in their home leg of the competition, meaning they had to bat first four times on a surface where seven out of eight games were won by the chasing side. Nevertheless, 2025 will be looked back on as a missed opportunity for RCB, both in terms of what they couldn’t control and what they could.
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