Lanning & Co fall short against dew, black-soil pitch and Giants' smarts

Meg Lanning stood at the crease with her arms by her side, eyes closed, mouth slightly open. Her bat lay on the ground. Every inch of her body showed her frustration.

She had just been dismissed by a Kashvee Gautam length ball that was angled in. An innocuous delivery, really. Nine times out of ten, she would have pulled it over backward square-leg. She attempted the low-to-high shot with a slight swivel here too, but the ball hit her thigh pad, and fell to the ground. Then, as she completed the swivel, her left heel nudged the ball on to the stumps. Lanning was gone for 14 off ten balls just when it seemed she had the measure of things.

UP Warriorz (UPW) were playing their first match of the Vadodara leg of WPL 2026. They were coming off a five-day break, and they had posted 187 for 8 in Navi Mumbai in their last game. They have done the season double over Mumbai Indians (MI), something no team had done in three-and-a-half seasons. However, the conditions at the Kotambi Stadium were very different from those at the DY Patil stadium. Vadodara has black-soil pitches as opposed to red-soil ones. Moreover, dew was present right from around toss time in Vadodara while it used to set in much later in Navi Mumbai.

Gujarat Giants (GG) knew all this because they had played in Vadodara just a couple of days ago, when they were outclassed by Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). So they came prepared. Out went legspin-bowling allrounder Georgia Wareham and in came Danni Wyatt-Hodge to add to the batting muscle. That meant they had to shuffle the order. Wyatt-Hodge's best position is at the top, so Sophie Devine, who has played most of her T20Is in the last couple of years in the middle order, had to move down. They also brought in Rajeshwari Gayakwad as someone who could bowl inside the powerplay, leaving out fellow left-arm spinner Tanuja Kanwar.

Both the moves paid off for GG, even if not immediately. Devine, batting at No. 5, found herself in the middle in the tenth over. It was not easy to force the pace even if you could argue GG batted a little cautiously at that point. Even a set Beth Mooney went about at around a-run-a-ball throughout. Devine was on 21 off 24 when she was dropped, and then crawled to 30 off 33 and should have been out for 35 off 38 balls. Shikha Pandey overstepped, Devine took 15 off the last four balls of the innings and GG had crossed 150. In head coach Michael Klinger's words, "It was a 170-180 par wicket. I thought the [pitch] played the best out of the three games so far. The black soil doesn't bounce as much but it came on to the bat nicely today."

This is perhaps where UPW missed a trick. They could have pushed the out-of-form Kiran Navgire down the order, emulating GG's Devine move, though Devine is not really out of form. Navgire was out for a duck when she overbalanced after missing a flick, and the ball deflected off Mooney's pads behind the stumps on to the stumps. In six innings this season, Navgire has 16 runs and three ducks. She has been a shadow of the batter she was at the Senior Women's T20 Trophy where she amassed 233 runs at a strike rate of 235.35 in Maharashtra's maiden title win. UPW could have done with a spin-basher lower down the order on Thursday.

GG also knew that Lanning, Phoebe Litchfield and Harleen Deol had scored about 65% of UPW's runs coming into the game. Ash Gardner had Litchfield caught on the reverse sweep at short third, and Deol stuttered to 3 off 12 before holing out off Renuka Singh to Gardner, who was two-thirds in from the long-on boundary. Gayakwad then came on in the 11th over, bowled a four-over spell unchanged and returned 3 for 16 to bag Player-of-the-Match honours.

"It is more about the bounce than anything else," Lanning said at the press conference. "It is just not bouncing as much as it did in Navi Mumbai. It doesn't mean you can't score. There's still pace on the wicket, you have just got to work out how to use it, and what shots are effective for you individually because everybody does play differently. It's certainly a wicket you could score on. You just have to adapt and assess the conditions quickly."

The other trick Lanning and UPW perhaps missed was by not giving at least one more over to Deepti Sharma, who had five dots in her two overs. She got the better of Gardner for the sixth time in T20s and looked to be in rhythm. While UPW bowled 12 overs of spin, GG bowled just the seven, but they were bowling at a time when dew was heavier. Instead, Pandey bowled the 18th and 20th overs, which went for 11 and 16 respectively and her 53 from four overs became the most expensive spell by an Indian in the WPL.

"I never would have thought that red soil to black soil is such a stark difference," Gardner said. "The ball hasn't bounced anywhere near as much, there's certainly not as much pace on the [pitch]. As a batting unit, you need to think [about hitting] straight for as long as possible, and not play the shot that I played across the line [to be bowled]. When the ball softens up, you can go square. With the ball, it is about making sure you hit the stumps as much as possible."

UPW have two more games left; they have a seven-day gap before their next match, against RCB. With the race for the playoffs gaining heat, they would know they have time to adapt and get back. Lest that picture of Lanning is what they end up taking back at the end of the season.