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3 min readFeb 6, 2026 01:05 PM IST
RCB head coach Malolan Rangarajan said that Mandhana had been battling high fever before the final and told him that she would play the match, despite being ill. (CREIMAS)
Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) won their second Women’s Premier League (WPL) title on Thursday, defeating Delhi Capitals by six wickets in Vadodara. One of the stars of the 204-run chase was captain Smriti Mandhana, who made 87 runs off 41 balls to play a central role in the title win.
Following the victory, head coach Malolan Rangarajan said that the 29-year-old had been battling high fever before the final and told him that she would play the match, despite being ill.
“She was seriously unwell with a high fever. But to turn up, not even show it, nobody in the team [knew]…for one second also didn’t show it. That’s the person Smriti is. When I spoke to her this afternoon, she said, ‘Nahi, Malo, koi problem nahi (there’s no problem), I’ll be there.’ So that’s her with her work ethic,” Rangarajan told the media after the win on Thursday.
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Mandhana put on 165 runs for the second wicket with Georgia Voll, which formed the bedrock to RCB chasing the score down in the final over. Rangarajan admitted that the left-hander seemed to have saved her best performance for the finale.
“I think she saved one of her best innings for the final. The way she batted was….inhuman? I don’t even know the word to use.”
“So classy, so elegant…it didn’t feel… when you looked at her, you could see that she was in control of what she wanted to do. She was timing the ball, she was hitting, picking the pockets in which she wanted to attack.”
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“She trained two days prior to the game and we’ve been having a lot of chat about her batting, how she’s feeling and I reckon that her last training session [on Wednesday] was among the best she had batted,” he said.
Rangarajan also praised Mandhana for her leadership qualities, revealing how the 29-year-old had led from the front.
“She led the team by example, set the standards in every training session. I’d be doing a disservice even if I tried saying how good Smriti has been in these last months,” the head coach said.
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