3 similarities between IPL 2024 and WPL 2024 finals
Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) continued their dominance to lift the Indian Premier League (IPL) title on Sunday (May 26) at MA Chidambaram Stadium, Chennai. The Shreyas Iyer-led side finished on top of the table in the league stage and prevailed over the SunRisers Hyderabad in Qualifier 1 and the final to lift the trophy for a third time.
With the culmination of the IPL 2024 final, there have been a few similarities of the result with the Women's Premier League 2024 final as well. The summit clash of the WPL witnessed Smriti Mandhana-led Royal Challengers Bengaluru securing a victory over Delhi Capitals.
On that note, let's look at the three resemblances between the IPL and WPL 2024 finals.
#1 Australian captain vs Indian captain
Pat Cummins won it all in 2023 for the Australian team. Under his leadership, Australia won the World Test Championship and ODI World Cup. However, Cummins couldn't continue his trophy-winning streak in IPL 2024.
On the other hand, Shreyas Iyer proved his merit as a leader in the 2020 season when he led Delhi Capitals to the final. Iyer has been leading the KKR side since 2022, finishing in the seventh position in the last two seasons.
Nevertheless, this time around, Iyer finally managed to get hold of the silverware and received praise from the cricket fraternity for his tactics and bowling changes.
In the WPL final, former Australian captain, Meg Lanning led the Delhi Capitals. With two ODI World Cups and five T20 World Cups, she had a great record as a leader as well.
Meanwhile, Smriti Mandhana has been leading Royal Challengers Bengaluru since the 2023 season. Failing to seal a spot in the semi-finals in their inaugural season, RCB made a turnaround to lift the trophy this year.
#2 Team batting first bowled out for 113 in 18.3 overs
The Knight Riders bowlers dominated from the first over when Mitchell Starc bowled a ripper to send Abhishek Sharma packing. In the following over, Vaibhav Arora induced an edge of Travis Head to put SRH under pressure.
The rest of the attack, comprising of Andre Russell, Harshit Rana, Sunil Narine and Varun Chakravarthy, were exceptional with their line-length to secure consistent breakthroughs for the team. As a result, KKR bundled out SRH for 113.
The WPL finale witnessed Delhi Capitals starting on a grand note, but the likes of Shreyanka Patil and Sophie Molineux dismissed the opening batters to cause a downfall. Patil (4/12) and Molineux (3/20) were impressive but DC were all-out for 113 in 18.3 overs.
#3 Side led by an Indian captain won by 8 wickets
Another interesting similarity between the IPL and WPL 2024 finals, the winning team was led by the Indian captain, who won the game by eight wickets.
Leading the charge for the Shreyas Iyer-led KKR was Venkatesh Iyer (52* off 26). In this process, KKR achieved the record for the fastest chase in terms of balls (57) to spare.
On the other hand, skipper Smriti Mandhana (31) and Ellyse Perry (35*) were the major contributors as RCB sealed the chase in the last over of the WPL final.