Capitals opt to bowl; WPL debuts for Deeya Yadav, Vaishnavi Sharma, Rahila Firdous

Toss Delhi Capitals chose to bowl vs Mumbai Indians

Placed at the bottom of the WPL points table, Delhi Capitals (DC) opted to bowl against Mumbai Indians (MI) in Vadodara. DC captain Jemimah Rodrigues expected the ball to skid on a lot more under lights and some dew later in the game.

DC handed a debut to batter Deeya Yadav from Haryana. "She's 16 but she can smack the ball out of the park," Rodrigues said. Deeya, at 16 years and 103 days is the youngest to play in the WPL. G Kamalini, at 16 years and 213 days last year, was the previous youngest. DC left out Minnu Mani as the only change.

MI, placed second but with the same points as UP Warriorz and Gujarat Giants, made as many as four changes, which included the omission of Amelia Kerr. One of the changes was forced as their first-choice wicketkeeper G Kamalini was ruled out of the tournament earlier on Tuesday and her replacement left-arm spinner Vaishnavi Sharma will also debut tonight. That meant MI's only wicketkeeper in the squad Rahila Firdous would be the third debutant for the day. Also coming in their XI are pace bowler Shabnim Ismail and Poonam Khemnar.

Kerr was missing her first game of this WPL and MI also left out Triveni Vasishtha and Kranthi Reddy.

DC have played four games so far while all others have played five. Even though they have won just one out of those four, they won't be out of the playoffs race even if they lose this clash. RCB are the only team to have made the playoffs so far with five straight wins.

This is the second game to be played in Vadodara this WPL, and the pitch full of cracks was expected to be slower and keep lower than those in Navi Mumbai. The two square boundaries were quite skewed, measuring 52 meters and 61 meters.

This is the second time these two teams are taking on each other. MI had thrashed DC by 50 runs in the first meeting, 10 days ago in Navi Mumbai.

Delhi Capitals: 1 Shafali Verma, 2 Lizelle Lee (wk), 3 Laura Wolvaardt, 4 Jemimah Rodrigues (capt), 5 Marizanne Kapp, 6 Minnu Mani, 7 Niki Prasad, 8 Sneh Rana, 9 N Shree Charani, 10 Nandani Sharma, 11 Lucy Hamilton

Mumbai Indians: 1 S Sajana (wk), 2 Hayley Matthews, 3 Nat Sciver-Brunt, 4 Harmanpreet Kaur (capt), 5 Nicola Carey, 6 Amanjot Kaur, 7 Rahila Firdouse (wk), 8 Poonam Khemnar, 9 Sanskriti Gupta, 10 Vaishnavi Sharma, 11 Shabnim Ismail