Healy and UP Warriorz spinners demolish RCB by 10 wickets

Alyssa Healy played around with the Royal Challengers Bangalore bowling attack at the small Brabourne Stadium to smash an unbeaten 96 off just 47 balls, to hand Royal Challengers their fourth loss in a row and sink them further at the bottom of the points table.

UP Warriorz, meanwhile, remained third with their second win from three games, after their lead spinners Sophie Ecclestone and Deepti Sharma combined for astonishing figures of 7.3-0-39-7 to restrict Royal Challengers to their lowest total of the WPL, 138, which Healy and her opening partner Devika Vaidya chased down in 13 overs with an unbroken stand.

Royal Challengers will rue the lack of batting contributions from their India stars Smriti Mandhana and Richa Ghosh, who fell for 4 and 1 respectively, and their innings would have ended for a much smaller total if not for Ellyse Perry's attacking 52 off 39 despite wickets falling at the other end. Once Mandhana was dismissed in the fourth over, Deepti and Ecclestone took the next four wickets that fell to bowlers, along with Heather Knight's run-out in between. Only Sophie Devine and Perry crossed 15 as Royal Challengers slid from 73 for 1 to 98 for 4 to 135 for 6 to eventually losing their last five wickets for just 13 runs.

With Megan Schutt dropped from the XI and Renuka Singh not bowling for the first four overs, Healy tore into Royal Challengers starting with back-to-back fours in the second over, followed by two more in the next and then three consecutive off Shreyanka Patil in the sixth over to race to 38 with team score 55 in the powerplay. She got to her fifty off just 29 balls and kept going until she had the highest score of the WPL so far.