Gujarat Giants Women have brought back their game adding their third win of the Women’s Premier League (WPL) 2026 after three consecutive defeats.
The Giants defeated UP Warriorz by 45 runs with a powerful bowling line-up including Sophie Devine and Player of the Match Rajeshwari Gayakwad. With the win, the Giants have moved up to second place in the points table with 6 points and a net run rate of -0.341. Meanwhile, UP Warriorz remain in bottom with just two victories in six matches played so far.
The Giants managed to get a decent start in the first innings with opener Beth Mooney scoring 38 runs off 34 balls. Meanwhile, Danni Wyatt-Hodge and Anushka Sharma each managed to add 14 runs off 8 balls. Skipper Ashleigh Gardner got out for 5 runs, while it was all-rounder Sophie Devine who managed to score an undefeated 50 runs off 42 balls.
The lower-order batters, however, lacked on their part failed to add much runs and set up a target score of 154. The UP Warriorz bowling line-up was strong headed in their approach with Kranti Gaud and Sophie Ecclestone taking two wickets each, while Chloe Tryon and Deepti Sharma added one each. Two wickets came from run-outs.
But despite a strong bowling performance, the underwhelming performance by the batters left UP Warriorz under the deep. After losing the wicket of Kiran Navgire in the first over, opener and captain Meg Lanning scored just 14 runs off 10 balls. Coming in next, Phoebe Litchfield (32 off 17) and Chloe Tryon (30* off 22) somehow took the momentum but the team lost wickets of the remaining seven batters that followed.
Gayakwad picked up three wickets for ths Giants, while Renuka Singh Thakur and Sophie Devine got two each, and Kashvee Gautam and Gardner secured one each. With the win, Devine is now the leading wicket-taker of WPL 2026 currently with 11 wickets in six matches played so far.
Ashleigh Gardner on Gujarat Giants Women’s win
During the post-match interview, Gardner heaped praise on the comeback the team made and got themselves a notable victory in WPL 2026 through combined efforts with the bowlers and batters.
Gardner said, “We scrapped well with the bat. We took the momentum from the batting innings to the bowling innings. 150 was a defendable total. The bowlers put them under pressure. We just spoke about fighting. We were all on the same points so it was like restarting our campaign. So we just wanted to stay positive. We are trying to implement things and trying to do good things for a long time.”
