With the new year, the new season of the Women's Premier League (WPL 2026) started and it started with a bang. In the very first match, current champion Mumbai Indians (MI) and former champion Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) clashed and the result came out as a 'last ball thriller'. The tournament had an exciting start on the field, but despite winning the first match, there was a bad news for RCB. The team's star Indian all-rounder Pooja Vastrakar was out of the tournament for several days without playing.
on friday 9th january wpl 2026 season The first match was played at DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai. Even before this match, eyes were on the fitness of Pooja, who had got injured a few days ago at the Center of Excellence (CoE) in Bengaluru. But when she did not get a place in the playing-11, the question arose whether Pooja had not fully recovered yet? After the match, RCB head coach Malolan Rangarajan clarified the situation regarding this.
While talking to the media after RCB's tremendous win on the last ball against Mumbai, Rangarajan told that Pooja will be away from action for at least 2 weeks. RCB coach told that earlier Pooja was in CoE due to shoulder injury and she was to be released from there 2 weeks ago but just before that she got a strain in her hamstring. Rangarajan said that due to this, the star all-rounder will now have to stay in CoE for at least 2 more weeks and his fitness is being constantly monitored.
Pooja was a part of Mumbai Indians till last season but in the last mega auction, RCB bought her for Rs 85 lakh. Well, not only RCB, but Mumbai also got a blow before the match, when their star Caribbean all-rounder Hayley Mathews could not play due to illness. However, he is expected to return from the second or third match.
As far as the match is concerned, the organizers and fans could hardly have expected a better start than this. Batting first in this match, Mumbai scored 154 runs losing 6 wickets in 20 overs. For that, Sajeevan Sajna played stormy innings of 45 runs and Nicola Carey played 40 runs. South African all-rounder Nadine Declerc took 4 wickets for Bengaluru.
In response, despite a fast start, RCB lost only 5 wickets for 65 runs and 7 wickets for 121 runs. At such a time, Declercq was frozen to one side. When RCB needed 18 runs in the last over, this all-rounder hit sixes and fours. By hitting a four on the last ball, he gave the team a thrilling victory by 3 wickets. De Klerk played an innings of 63 runs in 44 balls.
