Nothing like answering yourself as proof of early onset dementia... :-)
This is now fixed this on my main VM and I will verify later today if the same fix has resolved for the others (I strongly suspect it has)...
- In the host machine I uninstalled all devices under batteries in device manager choosing not to reboot after each removal.
- I rebooted the host once.
- I ran VMWare player as admininstrator.
- I powered on the Windows 7 x64 guest.
- The battery information is now correctly reported in the guest.
I will also check what happens if I restart the host and run VMWare Player as a normal user and report back here but I have work to take care of first...
Note: Abhijeet Nadgouda from VMWare Support, while he did not have the solution at the time, provided an exemplary initial intake for this query and my commendation has been communicated to his management! :-)