Who said what in WPL 2024’s Match 14 between the Mumbai Indians women and the UP Warriors women?

In the Women’s Premier League (WPL) 2024, Mumbai Indians Women (MI-W) defeated UP Warriorz by 42 runs in Match 14 at Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi on Thursday, March 7. MI scored a respectable 160/6 in the 20 overs allotted after choosing to bat first. UP lost the fourth game of the season because they could only score 118/9 in their 20 overs in response.

Their chase was off to a terrible start when Saika Ishaque gave UP the first blow in the second over itself by disturbing Kiran Navgire’s (7 off 8). With decisive victories over Chamari Athapaththu (3 off 5) and Alyssa Healy (3 off 9), respectively, Hayley Matthews and Shabnim Ismail joined the celebration as well.

Grace Harris (15 off 23), Shweta Sehrawat (17 off 15), and Poonam Khemnar (7 off 10) all failed to get going, adding to UP’s agony as they were reduced to 69/7 after 14.4 overs. Deepti Sharma battled bravely by herself, scoring an incredible 53* (36). But it turned out not to be enough to prevent her team from suffering a crushing loss.

The Mumbai Indians (MI-W) lost their opener, Hayley Matthews (4 off 3) in the second over of the day, which set them up for a terrible start. They were reeling at 17/2 after 3.4 overs when they lost Yastika Bhatia (9 off 13) in the fourth over. Following the two early blows, their team was saved from certain disaster by a pivotal 59-run standoff off 46 balls from captain Harmanpreet Kaur (33 off 30) and Nat Sciver-Brunt (45 off 31).

MI’s innings were captained by Amelia Kerr and S. Sajana.

When Rajeshwari Gayakwad destroyed Sciver Brunt’s stumps in the twelfth over, he ended their partnership, and Saima Thakor cleaned up Harmanpreet. After being dismissed, Amelia Kerr (39 off 23) and S Sajana (22* off 14) had a 43-run partnership off 26 balls, which enabled MI to reach 160/6 in the 20 overs that were allocated to them.

Following the match, the two captains and the Player of the Match said the following:

Harmanpreet Kaur, the Mumbai Indians’ winning captain, stated:

Initially thought we might be 20 runs short but we managed very well when they came out to bat. That partnership (between herself and Sciver-Brunt) was key, Sciver-Brunt batted really well, I was just rotating the strike. Kerr also batted really well but I thought they bowled well too, didn’t give away too much. When we were batting, we knew that there was something in the pitch and that’s what I told my bowlers. It wasn’t a big total but I told them we could manage if we could put it in the right lengths.

The losing captain, Alyssa Healy, UP Warriorz, said:

I thought Mumbai executed really well with the ball. Not a great start losing three wickets with the bat. We have been working really hard, the nature of the competition is such that it does not give you much time to work hard. We have dropped a couple of catches in almost every game and that has cost us. We had watched the conditions a lot on TV but didn’t assess it on the day, but we move on and come back stronger tomorrow. It would be nice for the top four to be scoring runs, but happy Deepti is getting the runs right through the tournament.

Player of the Match, Nat Sciver-Brunt, Mumbai Indians, said:

Very happy, we wanted to put some things right from the last game. Probably didn’t get off to the best of starts but decent total in the end. We sort of knew it was going to be a bit low but you’re not really sure until you play on it. We wanted to get up to 160 because we knew it was such a quick outfield. I like playing off the backfoot. Very happy with that (wicket off the slower ball), it’s a change-up I’ve been working on. Getting a couple of wickets at that point was a bit of a bonus, was good to restrict them to that total and hopefully do something for our run-rate.