Gujarat Giants (GG) suffered their fifth loss of their campaign in the ongoing Women's Premier League (WPL) against the Mumbai Indians (MI) on Saturday, March 9 and now find themselves on the brink of elimination. Giants are still not out of the WPL 2024 playoffs qualification race but it is now out of their hands as not only will they have to win their remaining games, but they will also have to depend upon other results to sneak into the top 3 somehow.
The Giants had a golden opportunity to defeat the defending champions. However, they failed to grab the crunch moments twice in the game to lose the clash in the final over. At 139/1 in 13 overs, it looked like GG could finally breach the 200 mark in this season but that didn't happen as one wicket and they failed to accelerate in the final overs. Another one during the bowling innings, MI required 91 runs off the last six overs and one wicket there could have been game-changing but full tosses and inability to bowl tight lines cost GG.
Giants' loss meant that the defending champions became the first team to qualify for the playoffs in the second edition, owing to a skipper Harmanpreet Kaur special. Giants will now have to win both their remaining games and even then they will only have six points in their bag and hence they have to hope that the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) lose both games.
RCB play last year's finalists MI and Delhi Capitals in their remaining two games and will have to win both. RCB still have the destiny in their own hands as two wins will ensure a playoffs spot for them. If they lose both, they will have to depend on GG to beat UP Warriorz and Delhi Capitals to beat the Giants in the final league stage game.
Similarly, for the Warriorz, if they beat the Giants, they will stay alive and will have to hope that RCB lose at least one of their remaining games if not both. If UPW lose to the Giants, they will have to depend upon the Delhi Capitals and hope that last year's runners-up beat both the Giants and RCB.
If RCB win even one of their remaining two games, the Giants will be knocked out. And similarly, if UPW lose to GG and RCB win just one more game, they will be through.
