Three seasons, three finals – all being direct admissions by topping the league stage, only to stumble at the final hurdle. After losing in yet another WPL final, the Delhi Capitals team is naturally dejected, especially considering how well they played the first half. But as they frequently do, the Mumbai Indians were able to step up in crucial final stages to win.
Jonathan Batty, the head coach of DC, denied rumors that his team was under pressure after losing two straight finals.
“The girls have been really positive, I can’t fault them. There has been no negative talk at all like ‘Oh we’ve messed up the last two finals, we’re going to take that baggage into this one’, none of that. I thought they were really positive, really confident. The girls have been fantastic, they trained superbly.”
“I don’t think there is a mental block at all. If you look at the way we performed with the ball, we did a great job to keep them to 149 on that wicket. We have seen what had happened in the elimination game and the other games here. We were expecting 180 to be a par score, so we were really happy with that. The players were ready for it, so I don’t think there was a mental block at all.”
As promised by Batty, DC had a good start to the final because to Marizanne Kapp’s outstanding new ball spell, which saw them take early wickets of Hayley Matthews and Yastika Bhatia. MI could only muster 20 runs off the PowerPlay as the tone was set by DC’s bowlers. On the big night, Harmanpreet Kaur and Nat Sciver-Brunt attended the party, which was unfortunate for Meg Lanning’s daughters. They threatened to push MI over the 160–170 line with their 83-run stand, but DC broke the stand and put up a fierce fight to limit the total at 149. DC lost the chase by eight runs despite having a manageable score.
“Everyone’s hurting a huge amount at the moment. I think 99 percent of the time you back yourself to chase 150 on that wicket there today. Big match finals, maybe the occasion just got to the players but full credit to Mumbai Indians for the way they defended that total. They made it really hard for us and we were never ahead in the chase. We were in the game all the way through, just couldn’t get over the line.”
The MI captain was the only hitter to bat at a high speed during the match, and Harmanpreet’s counterattacking 44-ball 66 proved to be the game-changing blow on the big night. In contrast to her typical approach at the crease this season, she did take her time at first, but once she got going, she hammered DC’s bowlers. Despite playing a supporting role, Sciver-Brunt was equally effective as the two helped Mumbai rally from a disastrous start to the match. When Harmanpreet went crazy in the middle overs, Batty didn’t criticize his team’s efforts.
“With players like Harmanpreet and Nat Sciver-Brunt, a lot of planning went into it and I thought we actually kept them calm for a while there, especially Sciver-Brunt. She had a great tournament scoring over 500 runs, so we have been planning about her and executed them really well today. Harmanpreet was fantastic, her innings was probably the difference between the two teams today.”
Given the Australian’s propensity for winning trophies in international cricket, captain Meg Lanning would have been most stung by losing another final. The 32-year-old will be devastated, especially at a time when her batting form hasn’t been as good as it once was, as franchise contests haven’t been kind to the Australian legend and the WPL has slipped away three times in a row. Despite the occasional strong knock, Lanning has displayed technical weaknesses due to the unavoidable difficulty with aging, but Batty threw his support behind the DC captain.
“She is thriving in the captaincy and leadership role again. She played some good knocks in the tournament and led a really good group of players for three years.”
There were many ups and downs in the final’s wild ride, with both sides trading blows at different points. Ultimately, DC was defeated by the narrowest of margins. Ironically, the final turned out to be a low-scoring thriller despite all of the high-scoring games at the location. Batty believed that it was too early to begin the post-mortem of the summit clash and that there was no pattern to the finals losses, despite the obvious disappointment of not winning the elusive crown.
“Everyone is in pain. Thinking about what went wrong will take some time. and that also applies to cricket. Two top-tier teams are facing off, and the game was really close. You lose by two boundaries, or eight runs. In the end, we lost it by two balls. Either way is possible. In the three finals, I don’t believe there was a common denominator. Both a winning and a losing side will exist. Unfortunately, this is the third time we have lost.
