WPL 2024 round-up, Part 6: From Eliminator to WPL 2024 Final - stakes, highlights, key players & how RCB won

Meg Lanning for the Delhi Capitals and Smriti Mandhana for the Royal Challengers Bangalore (Image credit: RCB Women via X/@WPLFinal)

1. WPL 2024 Final: DC, RCB captains Meg Lanning, Smriti Mandhana expressed relief over the ‘similar size of boundary’ at the Arun Jaitley Stadium's pitch No. 5 - ground zero for the summit clash between Meg Lanning's Delhi Capitals and Smriti Mandhana's Royal Challengers Bangalore on the evening of March 17. The boundary dimensions here range between 63 and 65 metres in the ‘V’ in front from the Red Fort end (which is on the opposite side of the media box end) for right-hand batters, with the square boundaries measuring 55 metres and the ‘V’ behind square measuring between 43 to 49 metres. By contrast, the Eliminator between RCB and defending champions Mumbai Indians was played on Pitch No. 3, and had a square boundary as short as 46 metres.

2. How RCB Women stormed into the final of WPL 2024: RCB earned their entry into the final by scripting a thrilling five-run victory in a successful 135-run defence against defending champions Mumbai Indians in the Eliminator. Asked if there was a “gurumantra” (magic formula) behind the three tight overs delivered by the RCB attack towards the close of Friday’s humdinger, RCB Skipper Smrithi Mandhana said: “I wish there was, because it would have been so much easier then... But definitely, Harman's (Mumbai captain Harmanpreet Kaur) wicket (in the 18th over) was very crucial. One-thirty-odd is a target that either makes you too defensive or too attacking and if you decided to take a middle gear, wickets tend to fall. We knew 130 (135) could be a tricky target to chase.”

3. RCB Women vs Delhi Capitals: Head to head clashes ahead of the WPL 2024 final: DC had won the previous four matches they played against RCB Women. As recently as four days before the final, on March 13 DC - led by Meg Lanning - had chased a score of 150, to win the match against RCB with just two balls remaining. Even Ellyse Perry's unbeaten 67 off 52 balls couldn't pull RCB ahead.

4. WPL 2024 Prediction | DC vs RCB: who will win the final? Barring the first match of WPL 2024, DC had been decimating their opposition. RCB, on the other hand, had seen mixed results over the three weeks of the second WPL. WPL 2024 saw scores as low as 107 (Gujarat Giants, against Royal Challengers Bangalore) and as high as 199 (also Gujarat Giants, against Royal Challengers Bangalore). RCB's highest score in the season was 198, against the UP Warriorz on March 4. (RCB won by 23 runs; Smriti Mandhana hit 80 runs off 50 balls, and was chosen Player of the Match.) DC's highest score the season: 194, against RCB on February 29. (DC won that match by 25 runs; Marizanne Kapp got Player of the Match for bowling figures of 2/35 [4 over] and putting up 32 runs off 16 balls)