Mumbai Indians, led by Harmanpreet Kaur, clinched their second Women’s Premier League title with an eight-run win over Delhi Capitals at Brabourne Stadium.
A collective team performance from Mumbai Indians, led by skipper Harmanpreet Kaur, overcame a potentially all-timer all-round show from Delhi Capitals’ Marizanne Kapp to bring a second Women’s Premier League title to Mumbai with an eight-run win at the Brabourne Stadium on Saturday.
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The inaugural champions became the first team with two WPL trophies. Meg Lanning’s Capitals suffered yet another heartbreak, registering a third-consecutive loss in the final, and perhaps the toughest one to swallow.
That’s because they looked in control of their destiny for the first 21.5 of the 40 overs of the match. They had kept Mumbai down to 149 in the first innings and after the 11 balls of the second, Meg Lanning and Shafali Verma had found 15 runs, a number that their opponents took five overs to get to.
But, just like the 2022 final, Mumbai’s quality came bursting through. Nat Sciver-Brunt went through Lanning’s defenses and six ball laters Shabnim Ismail got Shafali Verma plumb LBW.
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Jess Jonassen and Jemimah Rodrigues survived the rest of the powerplay but there was a demon named Amelia Kerr waiting for them outside of it. She got them both out in two overs, taking the Purple Cap from her teammate Hayley Matthews, and in between Saika Ishaque managed to get Annabel Sutherland stumped.
With no place to hide, Kapp started to counter-attack. A couple of boundaries against Sciver-Brunt reignited some hope but at the same over, the Capitals had their typical brain fade run out with Sarah Bryce as the victim. Kapp continued her scintillating hits, almost inexplicable against the background of the cluelessness of her partners and the nervousness of young Niki Prasad.
Kapp’s 16 off three balls against Ishaque in the 16th over brought it to 35 off 24, which became 29 off 18 when Prasad finally got a boundary away against Ismail. But again it was her all-round nemesis, Sciver-Brunt who was brought back and instantly got her and Shikha Pandey out.
Prasad battled for a bit, and took the match close with 12 needed off 4 and one wicket to go, but at the end she was too naive and too out of partners to carry the weight of the collapse.
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In the first innings, the powerplay went much like the second. Yastika Bhatia and Matthews had no clue how to play Kapp’s prodigious swing. Runs didn’t come and Matthews was the first to let one sneak through her defenses and clean-bowl her in the third over. It took the South African three more balls of her next over to get Bhatia to slice one to Rodrigues at point, who took a diving catch forward, and end her misery at 8 (14).
In stepped two of the clutch-est players of the generation: Harmanpreet Kaur and Sciver-Brunt, into the team as much for their international pedigree as their penchant to just stand out in these matches.
They let the powerplay end at 22/2 and saw off Jess Jonassen’s first over with six singles. But the next seven overs weren’t spared without at least one boundary, with six seeing multiple. Harmanpreet reached her fifty in no time and Sciver-Brunt became the first batter to score 1000 runs in the competition.
In the 15th over, Nallapureddy Charani was almost taking their momentum to the next level with a five wides but luck turned at Sciver-Brunt hit an out-of-character sweep straight to square leg.
Skipper Harmanpreet continued taking on the bowlers from her end but wickets Jonassen took two on the other end in the next over. Annabel Sutherland then landed a seemingly killer blow as Harmanpreet holed out on the first ball of the 18th over with the score at just 118 runs.
But, continuing the theme of the competition, Amanjot Kaur and G Kamalini’s small cameos took them to a par score of 149. It didn’t look par at the time because after the early movement, the ball came on the bat quite nicely but as it showed later on, a par score in a league game is quite different from a par score in a final.
