Courtesy: WPL
On Saturday, February 15, in the second match of the Women’s Premier League (WPL) 2025, which was played at the Kotambi Stadium in Vadodara, Delhi Capitals (DC) defeated Mumbai Indians (MI) in a last-ball thriller by two wickets, to register their first win of the new season. After an exceptional unbeaten fifty from Nat Sciver-Brunt for Mumbai Indians, it was the quality batting performances from youngsters Shafali Verma and Niki Prasad on debut, which took Delhi Capitals over the finishing line.
For the unversed, Meg Lanning, the captain of Delhi Capitals, won the toss and decided to bowl first, and in the first over of Mumbai Indians’ innings, Shikha Pandey dismissed Hayley Matthews without troubling the scorers before dismissing her opening partner Yastika Bhatia in the first power play stage. For the third wicket, Nat Sciver-Brunt and captain Harmanpreet Kaur shared a crucial partnership of 73 runs, to bring MI’s innings back on track.
Harmanpreet Kaur scored 42 runs in just 22 balls with four fours and three maximums, which included 18 runs in four balls against Annabel Sutherland before losing her wicket to the Australian. Following that, none of the MI batters reached double figures as Nat Sciver-Brunt batted right throughout, to get past her fifty before staying unbeaten on 80 runs in 59 balls, to help her team reach 164-run total in 19.1 overs.
Shikha Pandey registered figures of 2/14 in her four-over spell, while Annabel Sutherland picked up three wickets despite being quite expensive in one of the overs for DC. In pursuit of the 165-run target, Delhi Capitals got off to a fantastic start in the power play stage courtesy of Shafali Verma, who scored 43 runs in just 18 balls with seven fours and two maximums before losing her wicket to Hayley Matthews.
After that, DC lost three more quick wickets of captain Meg Lanning, Jemimah Rodrigues, and Annabel Sutherland relatively cheaply, to find themselves in some trouble at 76/4 in the ninth over. Alice Capsey and Niki Prasad steadied the innings of Delhi Capitals while scoring runs under 100 strike-rate, which meant that the pressure was on them to push the scoring rate, to get to the target within the allotted overs.
Following the dismissal of Alice Capsey, Sarah Bryce provided much needed push to her team’s innings, scoring 21 runs in just 10 balls with two fours and one maximum. Niki Prasad was dismissed in the last over for 35 runs in 33 balls, but DC managed to win on the last ball by the barest of all margins.
