Smriti Mandhana and Jemimah Rodrigues would person sat beside each different successful India’s dressing country galore times. On the eve of the 2026 Women’s Premier League final, the 2 India stars sat adjacent to each different arsenic captains of Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Delhi Capitals, respectively. The glittering trophy, which is astatine involvement connected Thursday, was placed close successful the middle.
Smriti has been present earlier — she led RCB to the rubric 2 seasons ago. While Jemimah has played 3 finals for Capitals, this is her archetypal sensation of enactment astatine the WPL. As would beryllium expected with adjacent mates, the banter flowed and a fewer laughs were shared astatine the commencement of the pre-match media enactment earlier they got down to much superior business.
For Capitals to participate a 4th consecutive last seemed retired of bounds erstwhile they mislaid 3 of their archetypal 4 games. But Jemimah has shown quality portion steering the ship. The 25-year-old flicked a power during India’s triumphant ODI World Cup run past year, and has present continued successful the aforesaid vein.
“In the past 3-4 months, I deliberation I’ve grown the most. Especially successful the past period arsenic a captain. The champion portion astir captaincy is I person thought little astir myself and much astir the team. And that took a batch of unit disconnected me. So that conscionable gave maine that abstraction wherever I don’t overthink my game,” Jemimah told the media.
In RCB’s tally to the final, Smriti has besides led by example. The ace opener shared the recognition with Malolan Rangarajan, who is the franchise’s caput manager for the archetypal time.
“I’ve known Malo from the archetypal season. He’s highly calm and composed. A batch of girls person enjoyed moving with him and taken the calmness helium brings to the team.,” she said.

3 months ago
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