New Delhi: Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) captain Smriti Mandhana revealed on Monday that the team’s historic win in the Women’s Premier League (WPL) took a year of hard work and planning from all over.
“The first thing, they were like, this is your team and build it the way you want to do it and set the culture. That was the biggest thing for me,” said Mandhana as quoted by the RCB website. “And the second thing was that we really want to set a good culture in terms of, happy and positive stuff. So that was a big thing in terms of planning, how we want the team environment to be.” RCB added in a statement that it had a dedicated communication group for the Indian domestic players in the off-season.
The team also had to plan and execute their strategy perfectly to limit the opponent to a modest total of 113 runs in the pivotal tournament finale. “Then the second bit of planning, where we started chalking down names, started tracking players like Sophie Molineux was injured last year. So we had to track her, whether she’s doing fine, what’s happening. (Coach) Luke (Williams) being from Australia really helped,” said Mandhana.
The RCB captain also emphasised the importance of the various training camps that the team conducted for the players over the past year. “One very good thing RCB did was they conducted several camps last year. Training camps, fitness camps, batting and bowling-specific camps, that was also part of our planning. Our plan was to give a platform to domestic cricketers so that they were completely ready for this level,” he added.
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