Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) Women added England fast bowler Lauren Bell to bolster their pace battery for the Women’s Premier League (WPL 2026) season. The INR 90 lakh recruit made her WPL debut today (January 9) in the season opener between MI-W vs RCB-W and made an immediate impact.
Bell started with a maiden first over- an extremely rare sight in the shortest format before removing Mumbai Indians (MI) opener Amelia Kerr to help RCB draw first blood in the powerplay. The 25-year-old eventually finished her spell with extremely tidy figures of 4-1-14-1, on a quick outfield where other bowlers leaked runs.
This inch-perfect display from the RCB star begs comparisons with another pacer from the franchise – Aussie quick Josh Hazlewood, who played a key role in helping the men’s team break their jinx and win their maiden title in IPL 2025.
Now, with the RCB Women team aiming to turn their fortune around after a disappointing last season where they failed to qualify for the playoffs after finishing fourth in the five-team table, RCB fans will hope Lauren Bell can spearhead the pace attack like Hazlewood and help them win their second title.
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Like Hazlewood, Lauren Bell is also a tall pacer who is extremely clinical in the powerplay and death overs. Furthermore, she can swing the ball bothways and is capable of extracting movement off the surface while also generating bounce by hitting the deck hard, much like Hazlewood did during the IPL 2025 season where he finished as RCB’s top wicket-taker with 22 scalps from 12 innings.
Not just technique and action, the numbers also suggest that Hazlewood and Bell share similarities and that the latter can replicate the former’s success.
Talking about numbers, both players have almost identical stats. In IPL 2025, Hazlewood took 10 wickets in powerplay with an average of 16.0 and a dot ball % of 55.3. Similarly, Bell’s numbers in T20Is show 21 wickets and an average of 21.5 and a dot ball % of 63.9.
Coming to the death overs, Hazlewood snared six wickets in IPL 2025 at an average of 11.21 and a dot ball % of 40.8 whereas Lauren Bell has 17 wickets in at an average of 13.8 and an almost identical dot ball % of 40.7.
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