The muted non-celebration at the fall of Grace Harris' wicket said it all. UP Warriorz's crushing eight-wicket defeat to Royal Challengers Bangalore in Vadodara was a massive dent to their faint hopes of making the WPL 2026 playoffs. While RCB are through to the finals directly, UPW have been left staring at the bottom of the points table with their slim chances of qualifying now hanging by a thread.

Meg Lanning, UPW's captain, underpinned lack of consistency for the team's below-par showing this season. "We've played some good cricket in patches but we haven't been consistent enough," the Australian said after the team's fifth defeat in seven league games. "Every time we've got some momentum with the bat and built a partnership we've sort of lost that and then lost some wickets in clumps as well. We've put some good starts together but haven't been able to finish off and that's been quite costly."

Warriorz's campaign has indeed been a rollercoaster with some flashes of brilliance. After three defeats in a row, two back-to-back impressive wins to wrap up the Navi Mumbai leg revived their playoffs chances but those victories were then quickly overshadowed by another couple of heavy losses since landing in Vadodara. Lanning highlighted the fine margins that separate successful teams from those struggling to cope.

"We've seen teams that have been successful through this tournament put on big partnerships and really not give the other team a sniff. Unfortunately we haven't been able to do that. It's a similar story with the ball: we've hit some good areas sometimes but certainly not as consistent as we would have liked. It's sort of been a tournament of some good stuff but just not enough of it."

Perhaps, part of the underlying cause was the wholesale restructuring of the squad at the mega auction. From their 18-member side in the inaugural WPL cycle, UPW only retained uncapped India batter Shweta Sehrawat and chose to rebuild from scratch including onboarding a new captain in Lanning and a new backroom staff helmed by first-time full-time women's coach Abhishek Nayar. While they did bring back high-performing stars like Deepti Sharma and Sophie Ecclestone via RTM, the performances still weren't up to the mark.

Lanning acknowledged that the squad overhaul brought its own set of challenges but also refused to use it as an excuse. "I think it's always a challenge for every team coming together after a mega auction. Obviously, there are some players coming back but there's a lot of new faces as well and we had some new coaching staff too. That's no excuse for the results that we've had though. You have a short time-frame but everyone has the same time-frame so you need to try and put it together as best you can," she said.

Not a lot of things went to plan but the skipper reassured, on behalf of the unit, that it wasn't for the lack of trying. "Everyone's put in as much effort as they can. It's certainly not through lack of effort, there's been a lot of passion and effort put in by a lot of people. That's why, I guess, you get so disappointed when the results don't go your way. Certainly there's some things that are easy to look back on now that you would do differently but you can't really skip those steps. Unfortunately it just hasn't clicked as much as we would have liked and there's been a lot of learnings in there which we need to make sure we carry forward."

On the brink of elimination, Warriorz have the poorest net run-rate of -1.146 but they still have a game to play, and a mathematical possibility of sneaking through to the knockouts in the third spot. The margin for error is negligible, but Lanning insisted she'd like the team to give it their all since they "have nothing to lose."

All said and done, Lanning does know a thing or two about those "direct tickets" to the final - the kind they handed to RCB on the night. It was under her captaincy, in the three-year WPL cycle that concluded, Delhi Capitals made it to the finals by virtue of topping the points table for three successive seasons and yet the trophy remained elusive.

Drawing from her own experience, Lanning offered a bit of insight and a lot of empathy and her best wishes. "Oh, they've got a week to wait now which, I can tell from experience, is not the best way. Nah, I don't think. I think it does suit the team that plays the Eliminator, they obviously get some momentum. But, RCB have been the best team all season. They deserve their spot in the final, so good luck to them."