After Mumbai slumped to a last-ball defeat against the Royal Challengers Bengaluru on Friday, MI came into the game on Saturday with plenty of concerns: their top order buckled pretty easily and only a late innings flourish from Sajana Sajeevan and Nicola Carey. In the field against RCB too, the Mumbai side were clumsy — in fact, in the penultimate over, they gave RCB’s Nadine de Klerk three reprieves in the span of four balls before the South African dragged RCB to victory in the final over. But against Delhi, Mumbai took care of all those concerns to hand Delhi their first defeat under new captain Jemimah Rodrigues.
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‘We just didn’t bowl one good ball, which was needed in the last over’: MI skipper Harmanpreet Kaur
Nadine de Klerk’s 44-ball 63, with seven fours and two sixes, took RCB home from what seemed a near-impossible scenario. Express Photo | Amit Chakravarty)
Exactly 3 months ago, India skipper Harmanpreet Kaur had to witness South Africa’s Nadine de Klerk take the match away from her Indian team with a blistering 84 runs in the Women’s World Cup group stage. That was on October 9. On Friday, i.e. on January 9, Harman would again stand helplessly, this time as the Mumbai Indians captain, as de Klerk dragged Royal Challengers Bengaluru out of the mire and helped them win by 3 wickets.
“Well, we know that she (de Klerk) has the capacity to score whatever runs are needed in the last over. But yeah, I think we just didn’t bowl one good ball, which was needed in the last over. Sometimes this happens. We gave her two or three chances and when you keep giving a batter chances, they always come back with an even stronger mindset. So yeah, we can’t say the last over didn’t go our way – we got a few chances, but we missed them,” Harman said after the match.
On what they could have done differently, Kaur reiterated that one good ball in the last over would have done the trick.
