In a pulsating Women’s Premier League (WPL) 2026 Match 11 at DY Patil Stadium, 19-year-old Australian all-rounder Lucy Hamilton made her electrifying debut for Delhi Capitals, smashing 36 off 19 balls to propel them to 166 against table-toppers Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB).
Despite RCB’s clinical 8-wicket win in a clinical run chase powered by Smriti Mandhana’s near-century (96 off 61), Hamilton stole the spotlight at the post-match press conference. The young debutant reflected on her crucial partnerships, adapting to Indian conditions, and takeaways from a gritty fightback on the final day of the Navi Mumbai leg.
Delhi Capitals crumbled to 10/4 in the second over under a fiery new-ball assault from Lauren Bell (3/26) and Sayali Satghare (3/27), but Shafali Verma (62 off 41) anchored the recovery with a fighting half-century. Hamilton, entering the fray, stitched a vital 22-run stand for the 8th wicket with Verma and a brisk 34-run alliance for the 9th with Shree Charani. Her explosive knock, featuring 3 boundaries and 3 maximums, provided the finishing touches. She was also impressive in her spell (3.2-0-37-0) despite being a touch expensive with the ball.
At the presser, Hamilton dissected her batting blueprint alongside Verma, emphasising strike rotation to unleash the opener’s power. “Yeah, with Shafali, it was mainly just communicating on rotating strike, taking as deep as we can, and we kind of had the plan of getting her on strike. She obviously is striking them amazingly, so I was just rotating strike, trying to get her as many balls as possible,” she said, capturing the duo’s tactical synergy that lifted the Capitals from the brink.
RCB’s chase was a masterclass, with Mandhana and Georgia Voll (54* off 42) forging a 142-run second wicket stand to overhaul 167 with 10 balls spare. Hamilton lauded the opposition skipper’s brilliance while tipping her hat to RCB’s stump-to-stump bowling that dismantled the Capitals early. “Yeah, definitely. She’s obviously a world-class batter, and even just getting the opportunity to bowl against her and see how she goes about it. Yeah, like played an incredible game and we just were on the wrong end of it today,” Hamilton noted.
On RCB’s attack, she added, “Yeah, I think they bowled really tight to the stumps, which was really impressive. They obviously bowled most of our batters, so that was obviously a strategy to bowl nice and tight.”
Adapting from Australian pitches to India’s slide-on surfaces, Hamilton highlighted her learning curve. “Yeah, I think conditions are a little bit different compared to Australia, just concentrating on that and trying to make it as hard as I can for the batters,” she shared, underscoring her focus on precision lines and lengths on smaller fields. Despite the loss, she drew silver linings from the Capitals resilience: “Takeaways, I think you can take a lot away from every single game and just knowing that we fought to the end and everyone was up and about.”
RCB’s fourth straight win catapults them to 8 points atop the table, with the WPL caravan shifting to Kotambi Stadium, Vadodara, from January 19. For Hamilton, the impressive show on debut, bat and ball, signals a bright future in women’s cricket’s glitziest league.
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