Mandhana blitz, disciplined bowlers power RCB to 8-wicket win over Gujarat Giants in WPL
Bengaluru, Feb 27: Captain Smriti Mandhana's blitz and a disciplined effort by bowlers powered Royal Challengers Bangalore to a comprehensive eight-wicket win over sloppy Gujarat Giants in their Women's Premier League match here on Tuesday.
Mandhana (43, 27b, 8x4, 1x6) and S Meghana (36, 28b, 5x4, 1x6), who added 40 runs for the second wicket, made light work of a 108-run target.
Royal Challengers finished their towelling of the Giants in a mere 12.3 overs for their second win on the bounce in this WPL.
They just had to build on the strong foundation laid by the RCB bowlers, who restricted Giants to 107 for 7. Pacer Renuka Singh (2/14) and left-arm spinner Sophie Molineux (3/25) did the star turn for the home side after it opted to bowl.
The RCB chase began with a bang as Mandhana slammed two fours in the first two balls off pacer Lea Tahuhu a drive past the point and a well-timed pull carrying the ball to the fence in a jiffy.
The graceful left-hander added another four through a pull a ball later as RCB amassed 13 runs in the first over.
With boundaries raining, the Bangalore outfit marched to 32 for no loss in the third over but lost Sophine Devine to Ashleigh Gardner in the fourth over.
But her dismissal did not slow down the scoring as Mandhana smoked a six over the head off Tahuhu to keep the momentum going.
A fifty was there for taking, but a tame push off left-arm spinner Tanuja Kanwar cut short her entertaining stint.
Her innings also put in perspective the early struggles of Giants' batters, who limped without timing or power.
There was a certain tackiness on the pitch alright, but the RCB bowlers also hit the right length to keep the Giants batters on a tight leash.
The dismissal of Giants' skipper Beth Mooney (8) was a perfect example for this.
Mooney had struck Renuka for two boundaries earlier, and she immediately changed the line coming around the wicket.
She was rewarded with the big wicket when Mooney failed to tackle a delivery that shaped in to beat her defensive prod.
Renuka soon ousted Phoebe Litchfield too when the Aussie batter failed to drag her feet back inside the crease before Richa Ghosh, standing up, completed her stumping.
The pacer bowled her full quota of four overs on the trot and returned with handsome numbers of 4-0-14-2.
From that point, the Giants kept on losing wickets, including generally quick scorers like Ashleigh Gardner, and it thwarted their attempts to give some steam to the innings.
Dayalan Hemalatha's unbeaten 31 off 25 balls helped them go past the 100-run mark.
They ended the first 10 overs at 44 for two, and the back 10 too did not prove much different as RCB bowlers kept chipping away without conceding too many runs.
That the Giants managed a total of just 10 fours and two sixes in their entire innings underlined their tough time.
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Angry protesters from New York to Alaska assail Trump and Musk in 'Hands Off!' rallies
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Washington (AP): Crowds of people angry about the way President Donald Trump is running the country marched and rallied in scores of American cities Saturday in the biggest day of demonstrations yet by an opposition movement trying to regain its momentum after the shock of the Republican's first weeks in office.
So-called Hands Off! demonstrations were organised for more than 1,200 locations in all 50 states by more than 150 groups, including civil rights organisations, labour unions, LBGTQ+ advocates, veterans and elections activists. The rallies appeared peaceful, with no immediate reports of arrests.
Thousands of protesters in cities dotting the nation from Midtown Manhattan to Anchorage, Alaska, including at multiple state capitols, assailed Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's actions on government downsizing, the economy, immigration and human rights.
On the West Coast, in the shadow of Seattle's iconic Space Needle, protesters held signs with slogans like “Fight the oligarchy.” Protesters chanted as they took to the streets in Portland, Oregon, and Los Angeles, where they marched from Pershing Square to City Hall.
Demonstrators voiced anger over the administration's moves to fire thousands of federal workers, close Social Security Administration field offices, effectively shutter entire agencies, deport immigrants, scale back protections for transgender people and cut funding for health programs.
Musk, a Trump adviser who runs Tesla, SpaceX and the social media platform X, has played a key role in the downsizing as the head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency. He says he is saving taxpayers billions of dollars.
Asked about the protests, the White House said in a statement that “President Trump's position is clear: he will always protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for eligible beneficiaries. Meanwhile, the Democrats' stance is giving Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare benefits to illegal aliens, which will bankrupt these programs and crush American seniors.”
Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign advocacy group, criticized the administration's treatment of the LBGTQ+ community at the rally at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., where Democratic members of Congress also took the stage.
“The attacks that we're seeing, they're not just political. They are personal, y'all,” Robinson said. “They're trying to ban our books, they're slashing HIV prevention funding, they're criminalizing our doctors, our teachers, our families and our lives.”
“We don't want this America, y'all,” Robinson added. “We want the America we deserve, where dignity, safety and freedom belong not to some of us, but to all of us.”
In Boston, demonstrators brandished signs such as “Hands off our democracy” and “Hands off our Social Security.”
Mayor Michelle Wu said she does not want her children and others' to live in a world in which threats and intimidation are government tactics and values like diversity and equality are under attack.
“I refuse to accept that they could grow up in a world where immigrants like their grandma and grandpa are automatically presumed to be criminals,” Wu said.
Roger Broom, 66, a retiree from Delaware County, Ohio, was one of hundreds who rallied at the Statehouse in Columbus. He said he used to be a Reagan Republican but has been turned off by Trump.
“He's tearing this country apart,” Broom said. “It's just an administration of grievances.”
Hundreds of people also demonstrated in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, a few miles from Trump's golf course in Jupiter, where he spent the morning at the club's Senior Club Championship. People lined both sides of PGA Drive, encouraging cars to honk and chanting slogans against Trump.
“They need to keep their hands off of our Social Security,” said Archer Moran of Port St. Lucie, Florida.
“The list of what they need to keep their hands off of is too long,” Moran said. “And it's amazing how soon these protests are happening since he's taken office.”
The president golfed in Florida Saturday and planned to do so again Sunday, the White House said.
Activists have staged nationwide demonstrations against Trump and Musk multiple times since Trump returned to office. But before Saturday the opposition movement had yet to produce a mass mobilization like the Women's March in 2017, which brought thousands of women to Washington after Trump's first inauguration, or the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that erupted in multiple cities after George Floyd's killing by police in Minneapolis in 2020.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, protesters said they were supporting a variety of causes, from Social Security and education to immigration and women's reproductive rights.
“Regardless of your party, regardless of who you voted for, what's going on today, what's happening today is abhorrent,” said Britt Castillo, 35, of Charlotte. "It's disgusting, and as broken as our current system might be, the way that the current administration is going about trying to fix things — it is not the way to do it. They're not listening to the people."
Among thousands marching through downtown San Jose, California, were Deborah and Douglas Doherty.
Deborah, a graphic designer, is a veteran of the 2017 Women's March and was nervous that fewer people have turned out against Trump this time. “All the cities need to show up,” she said. “Now people are kind of numb to it, which is itself frightening.”
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