New Delhi, Nov 28 (IANS) Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB), the 2024 champions of the Women’s Premier League (WPL), wrapped up their first-ever mega auction with a mix of marquee signings and talented uncapped players ahead of the new season, where they will be led by Smriti Mandhana.
In a conversation with IANS, head coach Malolan Rangarajan spoke about how the auction went for the team, scouting process, the fitness of Pooja Vastrakar, roping in Gautami Naik and Prathyoosha Kumar, and more. Excerpts:-
Q. What are your thoughts on how closely the strategy you prepared aligned with what you were able to achieve in auction?
A. See, like you start getting bored of this, but everyone will say we got what we wanted or we got 85% to 90% of what we wanted. All I can say from an RCB point of view, we were very clear on what we wanted and how we were going to go about it. A lot of what happened in the auction room was very similar to the IPL 2025 mega auction from last year.
So, a bit of experience from there, knowing that a lot of money is flying out of the auction in the first few sets. So that kept us aware of what was happening and like I said, the planning helped us to exactly know what we wanted, how we want to play and which kind of players fit our strategy.
Q. Having worked with RCB in both men’s and women’s setups, what has motivated you to stay committed to women’s cricket? Do you feel perceptions around coaching in the women’s game are changing after the World Cup win?
A. Absolutely. Even prior to the World Cup win, I think WPL was the catalyst for that change. The (ODI) World Cup win will propel that further. At least, I can only speak for myself. I don’t want to generalize it. I never saw it like that. It was an opportunity to work with a bunch of cricketers, regardless of them being male, female.
It doesn’t matter. I am associated with RCB. RCB had picked another team in the WPL. I was given the opportunity to take up a role with the WPL team also. I wasn’t going to say no. The greatest joy is to help players, and help RCB win as many titles as possible.
Q. RCB has had a history of involving female coaches, from VR Vanitha, Courtney Winfield-Hill to Sunetra Paranjpe and now Anya Shrubsole. How important is it to continue that trend, given the limited presence of female coaches in the women’s cricket ecosystem?
A. I think, firstly, it starts with the fact that RCB got another team in a BCCI tournament. That’s where it starts and it trickles down from the upwards. As far as having Courtney in the initial years, now having Sunetra and Anya, and absolutely Vanitha was there in year one. Even as part of our scouting team, we have Swagatika, and Krithika.
But again, the way I see it, we want to have the best people involved. If it is women, yes, very good. I don’t see it as men are better than women, or women are better. We need the right people. It does help having women involved in the staff because there’s a level of comfort.
So I think we have a good balance now. We have myself and RX and Aamya and Sunetra in our coaching staff. All massively experienced in their own way. So it’s a good balance but I don’t think it is a very conscious effort of (having) women (coaches). The consciousness comes from the fact that we want a team in the IPL and WPL and we’ll do our best to make both teams as best as possible.
Q. You’ve been deeply involved in scouting for a long time. Could you walk us through your process – how much weight do you place on data and analytics, and the traditional eye test?
A. What I would say is within scouting, it is often termed only as identifying unknown players. I think that’s part of scouting and identifying players. The key bit for any organization is you need to identify players who are able to come and create an impact for the role.
If that happens to be somebody who is an unknown, well and good. If it happens to be somebody who is an experienced player, why not? Talent ID extends to finding players who fit a role. That will be number one. As far as the question on data, I think it’s a mix. It doesn’t work in isolation. You need to have information from a data point of view.
From the scout’s eye test, we do a psychological evaluation of players and then you show them to our coaches who then try to validate the evaluation of our scouts. I think there are 4-5 parts to it. Once that’s done, then it goes back to how we want to play.
Does this player fit into our scheme of things? So it’s not just going to a game, turning up to a game. This player is good, or that player is good. It doesn’t work like that. There are layers to it and we have to take everything into consideration.
Q. From a psychological standpoint, what are the non-negotiables you look for when identifying a player for RCB?
A. Being very specific about psychology, we just try to, especially with the ones who haven’t been exposed to the WPL level, or the international level, we just try to find out how well they can cope when they are with us in our trials. Then, once they are in our system, how can we support them?
Because, having been part of RCB for the last 6-7 years, there is a lot of attention, be it the social media, and you’ll see the difference even in the games we play. There’s going to be a lot of crowd. So, you can’t until they experience it, they’re never going to understand what it is. But from our point of view, we have to prep them as best as we can. So, again, we try to find out what kind of support they need.
Q. Could you share how the team identified someone like Gautami Naik and decided to invest in her at this mega auction?
A. With Gautami, again, our scouts were very bullish about her ability. As someone who has got power, if you see her, she’s a lanky individual, she’s got very long levers, and she was part of our trials in Surat and Mumbai. In both rounds, she was there, and then we had our coaches also – RX, Sunetra, myself, and we were able to send a couple of videos to Anya.
So, having followed her closely, we saw that from a physical point of view and the skills required from the field, she’s ticking all boxes. A good fielder, very athletic. Can bowl a couple of overs of off-spin also. We also had enough intel to know that there’s a chance that she may not attract a lot of bids in the auction.
But that’s almost like a tertiary point. The primary point being is, she ticked most of the boxes. An uncapped player, and will she be able to withstand the pressures? Maybe it will be more when she plays. But an exciting player nonetheless.
Q. Similarly, what stood out about Prathyusha Kumar that convinced you about her being the right fit for the squad?
A. Pratyusha, again, she’s been travelling with the RCB team for the last couple of years as a travelling wicketkeeper. So, we’ve followed her now for the last couple of years. She played the Maharani Trophy in Karnataka this year, had a decent outing and also played for Karnataka.
So, we need a backup keeper to Richa and with someone like Pratyusha, who we’ve been following, there were a couple of other options. But, having seen her for the last two years, when she’s been travelling with us, we knew that she could be someone we could pick and try to groom over the next couple of seasons.
Q. Can you provide an update on Pooja Vastrakar’s fitness? Are you confident she will be ready in time for the season?
A. We’ve shelled out some cash on her. But, officially, the BCCI has intimated to us that she’s expected to be fit by the next month and we’ll wait for that. The WPL is maybe 40-50 days away. We’ve been tracking her progress in the last couple of weeks.
She’s trending in the right direction and she’s with the CoE. So, until she’s with the COE, we’ll have to wait for her to be released. But it sounds like she will be fit in the next couple of weeks.
Q. RCB had tried getting Laura Wolvaardt, but you secured Georgia Voll instead. With her and Smriti Mandhana at the top, how exciting a prospect is this opening combination?
A. Voll is, again, a player who’s trending in the right direction. An exciting player and attacking batter – that would be something (great). If you look closely in our squad, we’ve looked for players who could play an attacking brand of cricket and Georgia Voll again gives us an option to bowl a couple of overs off-spin if required.
The fact that she’s an aggressive opener. We could use her at number three or opening. Very flexible with that. So, that was one of the things we were very keen on – having a very flexible batting unit – because the game keeps changing.
We’ll be playing in DY Patil Stadium. It requires a different set of batting. You go to Baroda (Vadodara), it’s different. So, Voll comes in with a lot of hope with us and we’ve done our due diligence on her. She is a good fit for us.
–IANS
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