Battling illness, Smriti Mandhana led from the front with a match-winning 87 off 41 balls to power Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) to their second Women’s Premier League (WPL) title with a successful chase of 204 against Delhi Capitals in Vadodara.
After the six-wicket win, RCB head coach Malolan Rangarajan revealed that the stylish left-hander was suffering from a 103-degree fever a day before, but showed the character when the situation demanded.
“Massive, massive flu,” Rangarajan said, with the WPL trophy beside him. “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.”
Mandhana’s match-winning innings also saw her end the WPL 2026 season as the tournament’s leading run-getter, finishing with 377 runs. “I think she saved one of her best innings for the final,” Rangarajan said.
“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.
“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.”
Offering insight into Mandhana’s preparation, Rangarajan described her as a batter driven by feel.
“She’s a nerd when it comes to her batting,” he said. “I guess that’s why she’s ended up achieving what she’s achieved in life, always looking to improve, always looking to get better at her skill.
“Whenever she’s batting, she’s like, ‘I’m going to try this, I’m going to try that.’ A little wide-base, something or the other, Smriti always tries. And I think, luckily and fortunately for us, she cracked the code two days back (against UP Warriorz) and she was very, very comfortable.
“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.”
With RCB now set to wear two stars on their jersey after their win, Rangarajan made it clear that the hunger remains intact. “We’ve won six games in the league, we’ve won the WPL; it’s a tremendous achievement. When we come back next season, there will be two stars on our jersey, and we’ll be chasing the third,” he concluded.