With coaching from Sivaramakrishnan behind her, Asha delivers for RCB

After the first season with the franchise, where she featured in five matches and took five wickets, Asha knew the challenges at that elite level where one has to show up, again and again, to make their mark. Sivaramakrishnan was also aware of her talent, the need was to make it all count on the biggest stage possible. The duo made most of the time they got and Sivaramakrishnan praised his student for absorbing the knowledge he had to offer. “It was about making small technical corrections and then how to approach the game and visualization. (We focussed on) the technical and mental part of the game because we had three days and two sessions each day. We had very little time to work on it, but she grasped everything very quickly and she started brilliantly in the WPL,” he mentioned.

And the skill and temperament were on display from Asha with her team in desperate need of wickets. After ending debutant Vrinda Dinesh’s long vigil and castling Australian vice-captain Tahlia McGrath back in the very same over, Asha got hit for 11 runs in her third over of the match. Despite getting hit, captain Smriti Mandhana kept faith in the 32-year-old and gave her the ball when it felt like UP were closing in on a win. With Grace Harris, one of the cleanest hitters of the ball in women’s game still in the game, Asha bowled a dream over to take three wickets in an over, including that of Harris, while giving away just two runs to keep Bangalore in the hunt for a win in front of their home crowd.