Dunkley, Deol give Giants first win and hand RCB third loss

Gujarat Giants 201 for 7 (Deol 67, Dunkley 65, Knight 2-17) beat Royal Challengers Bangalore 190 for 6 (Devine 66, Gardner 3-31) by 11 runsThe expectations from Royal Challengers Bangalore, even before the Women's Premier League began, were high. They had the most expensive player of the league in captain Smriti Mandhana, and a formidable squad.But within the first week of the WPL, they find themselves at the bottom of the points table as the only team without a win. The expectations are becoming pressure.On Wednesday, in a clash between two teams yet to register a win, it was Gujarat Giants who broke their duck at the Brabourne Stadium, beating Royal Challengers by 11 runs, a margin that doesn't really tell the full story.Powered by Sophia Dunkley's record 18-ball fifty at the top and held together by Harleen Deol's 67 off 45, Giants put together 201 for 7 as Royal Challengers' bowling continued to struggle for the third game on the trot.In their first match of the season, Delhi Capitals carted them for 223 for 2 and in their second, Mumbai Indians chased down 156 with more than five overs to spare, both at the batters paradise that Brabourne has proved to be.The third game was no different. Consider this: Megan Schutt, Australia's frontline pacer, started with a maiden and an opening spell of 2-1-13-1. Yet she bowled only three overs at an economy of 8.66. It's indicative of how nothing seems to be going Royal Challengers' way.The star of the show was undoubtedly Dunkley, who scored the tournament's fastest fifty so far. The England batter was not the team's first-choice opener and came in to replace the injured captain Beth Mooney in the previous game. On Wednesday, she ensured she would be hard to drop even after Mooney's replacement, Laura Wolvaardt, flies in.Runs kept flowing from Dunkley's bat on a ground with one boundary behind square as short as 47 metres. She reached her fifty in the fifth over, with 22 of her runs coming off just one over from left-arm spinner Preeti Bose.It could have been much worse