In a spot of bother and questions raised on their batting order, RCB’s Radha Yadav came completely out of sylabus to stun the Gujarat Giants’ bowlers. Read our analysis here!
💃 Radha’s day out stuns Gujarat Giants
After a blistering start—23 off Renuka Singh Thakur in the first over—RCB threw away their momentum. Kashvee Gautam picked up a couple of scalps, and by the end of the powerplay, the scorecard read 45 for 4.
We’ve covered RCB’s balance issues before. Their over-reliance on overseas superstars to deliver, compounded by Smriti Mandhana’s lack of form, has made for concerning viewing. But there’s also the inherent explosiveness of this batting side. In Grace Harris, Nadine de Klerk, and Richa Ghosh, they have batters throughout the order more than capable of playing the power game.
Despite this, the batters filling positions in between are Indian players Dayalan Hemalatha, Gautami Naik, and Radha Yadav—not exactly the most exciting set. There was even more frustration because these batters came in at 3, 4, and 5, respectively. Hemalatha has had modest returns, and Yadav seldom bats this high in any form of competitive cricket.
At 43 for 4, it was up to Radha Yadav and Richa Ghosh to steer the ship. More so, Richa, because she has a knack for managing these situations and a track record to go by. The consensus was that RCB would do well to get to even 150 from there, and that it would be Richa and possibly de Klerk whose runs would get them there.
But that’s where we had an out-of-syllabus knock. Radha Yadav.
It’s not that Radha doesn’t have the ability, but she’s always been viewed more as someone who can hold her defense and rotate strike as needed. Her T20I numbers suggest this—a highest score of just 14 while averaging 5 after 26 innings.
But if you’ve been following the A team regularly, you’d know she recently batted higher up the order (number six) and was more than handy, scoring a half-century and averaging 32.3 against well-reputed Australian bowlers like Lucy Hamilton, Kim Garth, and Tahlia McGrath.
Radha was not on it from the get-go. She accumulated dot after dot, struggling to rotate strike. At one point, she was 3 off 10 deliveries, struggling against Renuka, who’d come back strongly after her expensive first over.
But once Georgia Wareham’s leg-break came on, Radha seemed to ease into her batting. She moved around her crease brilliantly, manipulating the ball with skill—stepping outside leg stump, going back in her crease to make room, or coming across to off stump to open up the leg side. It was a ploy that clearly unsettled Wareham and Ashleigh Gardner, a little later.
In her first 20 deliveries, she scored 22 runs—a massive push after her poor start. From there to delivery 25, she added another 5 to move to 27. But from there on out, it was the next 22 deliveries that were an absolute batting masterclass.
Radha got a proper move on. She played an incredibly level-headed brand of cricket, merging brain and brawn. Of those 22 deliveries, she struck three fours and two sixes. But more impressively, she rotated strike with utmost skill. In this period, she not only took pressure off Richa Ghosh at the other end but also played just two dot balls—one against Gautam and one on the delivery where she was dismissed.
Could the Giants have done anything more? Maybe not bowl spin from both ends, because across all her T20 cricket, spin is the only matchup where she strikes over 110 and averages double digits.
But realistically, Yadav just hit perfect batting rhythm. She paced her innings incredibly well, and the spin from both ends allowed her to settle in and take RCB to a more-than-competitive total.
Fittingly, this is now the highest score in her T20 career and hopefully the first of many to come.
Data from Women’s T20 Batting App using Himanish Ganjoo’s T20 cricket BBB database up until October 2025, Arnav Jain’s fielding toolkit, Cricmetric, Cricket By JB’s WPL analyses & the Broadcast.
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