{"id":445502,"date":"2026-01-29T16:38:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T16:38:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/445502\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T16:38:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T16:38:08","slug":"rcb-opt-to-field-bring-in-vastrakar-for-naik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/445502\/","title":{"rendered":"RCB opt to field, bring in Vastrakar for Naik"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toss Royal Challengers Bengaluru chose to bowl vs UP Warriorz<\/p>\n

Pooja Vastrakar<\/a> returned to action for the first time in 15 months after Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) brought her in for Gautami Naik<\/a> in the game against UP Warriorz<\/a> (UPW) in Vadodara. Vastrakar last played for India at the T20 World Cup in 2024.<\/p>\n

RCB captain Smriti Mandhana, who opted to bowl, confirmed that Vastrakar would play as a batter only and that her “bowling will take time to come back”. Naik, who batted at No. 4 in this season, had three single-digit scores apart from her maiden WPL half-century. That was the only change for RCB, who sealed their playoffs qualification but are coming on the back of successive defeats.<\/p>\n

UPW straightaway handed a cap to England wicketkeeper Amy Jones<\/a>, who was brought in as an injury replacement for Phoebe Litchfield<\/a>. Jones played with UPW captain Meg Lanning at Melbourne Stars in WBBL 2025-26. While she played at No. 3 for Stars, she is likely to open the batting with Lanning after UPW dropped Kiran Navgire<\/a>, who had three ducks in six innings.<\/p>\n

Simran Shaikh<\/a>, who showed a glimpse of her power-hitting in the middle-order with Gujarat Giants last season, was also brought in for her first match of WPL 2026.<\/p>\n

With two wins and four defeats, UPW are at the bottom of the points table and are practically in a must-win territory for their remaining two games to stay in contention for the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Royal Challengers Bengaluru: 1 Grace Harris, 2 Smriti Mandhana (capt), 3 Georgia Voll, 4 Pooja Vastrakar, 5 Richa Ghosh (wk), 6 Radha Yadav, 7 Nadine de Klerk, 8 Sayali Satghare, 9 Arundhati Reddy, 10 Shreyanka Patil, 11 Lauren Bell<\/p>\n

UP Warriorz: 1 Meg Lanning (capt), 2 Amy Jones (wk), 3 Harleen Deol, 4 Shweta Sehrawat, 5 Chloe Tryon, 6 Simran Shaikh, 7 Deepti Sharma, 8 Sophie Ecclestone, 9 Asha Sobhana, 10 Shikha Pandey, 11 Kranti Gaud<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Toss Royal Challengers Bengaluru chose to bowl vs UP Warriorz Pooja Vastrakar returned to action for the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":445503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-445502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=445502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/445502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/445503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=445502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=445502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=445502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}