Kanika Ahuja: Waltzing into WPL limelight

Minutes after having done the heavy lifting for the Royal Challengers Bangalore in a tricky chase of 136, Kanika Ahuja walks in for the post-match media interaction and has to ask, "do I sit there?". You can tell this is her first press conference ever. She giggles throughout, rocks in the chair a little between questions, and can't wipe the confident grin off her face. After all, she's done exactly what she set out to.

"Bas, RCB ko ek match jeetana tha [just wanted to win one game for RCB]."

A match-winning 30-ball 46 to get RCB on the board in Women's Premier League 2023, no less. Having bowled well enough to restrict a misfiring UP Warriorz line-up, RCB themselves were in a spot of bother at 43/3, a ball after the powerplay, which soon became 60/4 by the end of the ninth over. That's three of their experienced overseas stars and captain Smriti Mandhana back in the hut in a do-or-die clash to keep their outside chance of qualification alive. On a tacky surface, it was left up to the young middle-order batter to steer the ship home. Ahuja got down to the task from ball one - a half-tracker on leg from Devika Vaidya, pulled to deep midwicket for four.

Ahuja mixed caution with aggression, respecting the good balls but at the same time also taking calculated risks, backing her strengths - like stepping out to Deepti Sharma to hoist one over the covers when the offside field was inside the ring. The Patiala-born showed immense game awareness as she picked her targets and waited for the loose balls, like the full-toss from part-time offspinner Grace Harris that she slog-swept to midwicket fence. The one off the next ball was a streaky edge that evaded Alyssa Healy behind the stumps, much to the Australian's frustration.

The tipping point of the chase came in the 12th over when the 20-year-old identified the unmanned fine leg region, shuffling in twice to scoop the length balls from Rajeshwari Gayakwad and bring the equation down to a very manageable run-a-ball. In between the two fours, was a beautifully timed drive over the covers as she gave the left-armer the charge. Ahuja stepped down to Vaidya too, in the following over, playing with the turn to heave one into the cow-corner hoardings for her only six.

She missed out on what would have been her maiden fifty, but revived the chase that UPW had managed to derail by the halfway mark, to leave with "no regrets". When Shreyanka Patil hit the winning runs, the camera panned to a happy RCB dugout for a change where the diminutive allrounder stood in front, letting out a small prayer with the same confident grin on her face.

"The target was a little under-par today, so I could afford to spend some time on the wicket to get set and then wait for the loose balls. All I was thinking was, we have to win tonight," Ahuja would tell the press later.

Former RCB men's captain Virat Kohli, who reached Mumbai ahead of India's ODI series opener against Australia in the city later this week, spent some time meeting the first batch of RCB Women and Ahuja said his pep talk - "it's not a pressure, but a pleasure to play out there for the team. Not a lot of people get to do it" - resonated with her.

Taken ill on the eve of their must-win clash against Delhi Capitals earlier this week, she had watched from the sidelines as RCB came closest to winning a game in the WPL 2023, only to find themselves on the wrong side of the result after a last-over thriller. When push came to shove, Ahuja stepped up.

"Humare dimag mein bas yehi tha ke aaj bas jeetna nahin hai, aaj unko maarna hai. [We made up our minds that, we shouldn't win today, but beat them convincingly]. We had nothing to lose, we just wanted to win by hook or by crook."

Picked ahead of the other hard-hitting uncapped allrounder (Patil) in their squad of 18, Ahuja had bagged a golden duck on RCB's tournament opener but grabbed attention the very next day as the face of the lower-middle order fightback that gave the team a respectable 155 on the board against Mumbai Indians. She wasted little time in settling in, and swept Amelia Kerr for four before coming down the track to the legspinner for a six over covers.

"After that knock of 12-ball 22 [13 balls], Smriti [Mandhana] di and everyone else told me that your intent was very good to see, and that I played well but I shouldn't be satisfied with just this much. I was quite happy then but also regretted getting out the way I did."

Despite low returns, RCB liked what they saw from her in pressure cooker situations and backed Ahuja enough to even promote her ahead of the likes of Heather Knight, Erin Burns and Richa Ghosh at No. 4 one game later, when they wanted to sustain the momentum from the Sophie Devine-Ellyse Perry partnership in their previous outing against the Warriorz.

RCB had in fact earmarked the powerhitter early on in the scouting process, long before they even officially knew they're getting a team. Known for her middle-order pyrotechnics that recently were in news because of a belligerent triple ton she hit (305 off 122 balls, 11 sixes, 45 fours) in a one-day inter-district competition in Punjab, the left-hander is admittedly a SuryaKumar Yadav fan and has modelled her 360-degree battig approach watching the videos of the ICC no. 1 ranked T20I star. Her hard-hitting skills had caught the attention of Mumbai Indians as well, triggering a small bidding war at the auction table that fetched Ahuja 3.5x her base price of INR 10 Lakh.

A roller-skater turned cricketer, Ahuja had to borrow a bat from the neighbours when the family initially hesitated in backing her passion for the sport. Like any concerned parent, Ahuja's father wanted her to focus on studies but a mother's heart is always with her child. "There was a time when she was the one who always supported me, even though it was only to get rid of me because if I stayed at home I'd either chew her brains or fly kites on the terrace all day," she teases, before dedicating the special, match-winning knock to her ill mother. "She's a little physically unwell so I'm playing all for her, because she's watching me. I want to dedicate this to my mother," she adds with a smile.

"She played the conditions very well, she played our bowlers very well," Harris, who top-scored with a 46 herself for the Warriorz, told the media after the five-wicket defeat.

"She saw pace on a couple of times and ramped us and I thought that was very clever if her strength wasn't necessarily hitting down the ground. I haven't seen much of her but she's got a good bat swing and [she is a] little left-hander so she can get under the ball. We expected her to really have a crack at the boundaries and I thought she played very smart. She hit to her areas and stuck to her strengths for the whole innings. Good on her! She was good," she added.

Not only is a middle-order hitter a rarity in the national set-up, her left-handedness gives Ahuja an extra edge to go on and become the potential solution to what has been Indian team's hunt for a 'finishing partner' for Richa Ghosh, who played an uncharacteristically composed second-fiddle in that 60-run partnership to steer RCB to safer shores. The Indian side has been on the lookout, and stepping up for a side led by national vice-captain is bound to get her name pop up in those conversations.

"Of course, like every player who takes up the game, I also want to play for India. I've got this platform of WPL to showcase my skills and if I keep getting better here, I'll hopefully get to play for India too."

Her match-winning knock against arguably the strongest spin attack of the competition is already an improvement on what the stage first saw of Ahuja less than a fortnight ago. For now, it helps RCB cling on to the faintest of all hopes of progressing to the knockouts, that also hinges on favours from other teams. But win on lose from here on, in unearthing and backing talents like Ahuja and Shreyanka Patil, the team has already given a massive endorsement for the success of WPL.