The 23-year-old youngster Vrinda Dinesh was left shell-shocked when the UP Warriorz franchise secured her services for a whopping 1.3 Crores, making her the 3rd most expensive player in the WPL 2024 auctions. She made her WPL debut on 24th February 2024 against Royal Challengers Bengaluru, playing decent strokes on her way to 18 (28 balls).
However, her debut season didn’t last long as she suffered a shoulder injury while fielding their game against Mumbai Indians at the Chinnaswamy Stadium on 28th February 2024, which was only her 3rd game in the season. The extent of the injury was such that she was ruled out of the entire season. Wicket-keeper batter Uma Chetry replaced her in the squad for the rest of the season last year.
Vrinda represents Karnataka at the domestic level, she scored 99 runs at a strike rate of 119.27 and an average of 33 in three innings with the bat for her side in the Senior Women’s T20 Trophy 2024-25. She scored 88 runs at an impressive strike rate of 157.14 in four innings while representing Team C in the Senior Women’s T20 Challenger Trophy this season.
She was the leading run-scorer for Karnataka with 380 runs at a sensational strike rate of 146.71 and a staggering average in excess of 60 (63.33) in seven innings with the bat for her side in the 2024-25 Senior Women’s One-Day Trophy. Her tally of runs included a couple of half-centuries and a century for Karnataka in that tournament, with a high score of 125 on 16th December 2024 against Tripura in the tournament, which also earned her the Player of the Match award.
Representing Team C in the Senior Women’s One-Day Challenger Trophy, she was also the leading run-scorer for her side and the 2nd highest run-scorer of the tournament only behind Shafali Verma (414 runs) with 217 runs at a strike rate of 101.40 and an impressive average of 43.40 in five innings.
Her tally of runs included one half-century and a century, which came against Team B on 7th January 2025 when she scored 109 runs at a strike rate of 103.80 in Chennai. Her game-changing innings earned her another Player of the Match award to add significant impact to her comeback journey conquering the domestic circuit with impressive performances.
Next on her list would be her journey to redemption in the Women’s Premier League (WPL) as the UP Warriorz has retained her for the upcoming 3rd edition of the tournament. She was seen having long training sessions in the nets and sweating it out ahead of the upcoming season which gets underway in less than a week’s time from 14th February 2025 (Friday).
The Warriorz will kick start their campaign in the upcoming edition on 16th February 2025 (Sunday) against Gujarat Giants in the 3rd game of the tournament at Kotambi Stadium, in Vadodara.
