Rodrigues holds nerve as DC hand MI third straight loss

There is officially a traffic jam in the WPL points table. A day after RCB qualified for the playoffs, Delhi Capitals (DC) captain Jemimah Rodrigues led her team over the line in a tense and hard-fought chase to extend Mumbai Indians' (MI) losing streak to three games in a row. That means all four teams apart from RCB now have four points each after DC lifted themselves off the bottom to push Gujarat Giants down to fifth.

Chasing 155 on a slow Vadodara track, DC saw Rodrigues walk out needing 71 off 58 balls. The MI bowlers then dried up the boundaries by taking the pace off on a pitch keeping a little low as well and forced Rodrigues and Laura Wolvaardt to mostly trade in singles and doubles. Rodrigues, however, kept finding the boundaries - square and behind square - to bring the equation down to a more comfortable 27 from 18. She placed the ball in the gaps for three more boundaries before Marizanne Kapp smoked a six to seal victory with an over to spare.

MI were earlier restricted after another slow powerplay with the bat. Once the openers failed again, Nat Sciver-Brunt did the heavy lifting once more with an unbeaten 65 after Harmanpreet Kaur fell for 41, as Shree Charani's 3 for 33 dented MI while they looked to press the pedal. But the total wasn't enough as almost all DC batters got going and Rodrigues scored her maiden fifty of the season and as WPL captain.

Even though MI stuck to their opening pair from the last game, it didn't change their powerplay fortunes. They continued to be the worst performing team in that phase, with a score of 23 for 2 against the DC quicks who kept aiming for the stumps. With some movement with the new ball, Nandani Sharma knocked over S Sajana's off stump in the fourth over and Kapp had Hayley Matthews' middle stump knocked back by two balls later.

The run rate was starting to plummet further as Sciver-Brunt kept finding the fielders and Harmanpreet got off to her usual slow start of 5 off 13. Until spin was introduced. Harmanpreet found the boundary twice as soon as Shree Charani erred with her lengths, including a trademark inside-out drive over the covers. Sciver-Brunt started to pepper the leg-side fence, and she stylishly brought up the half-century stand and push the run rate over six with an inside-out drive for the first six of the innings.

Just when Harmanpreet had started to turn into Harmonster with three consecutive fours off Shafali Verma square of the wicket, DC dented MI's middle order. The big wicket came through Shree Charani who had Harmanpreet hole out to long-on for 41 off 33 and even though Sciver-Brunt kept finding the boundaries regularly around the park and brought up her 11th WPL half-century - joint-most with Meg Lanning - and third of the season, Shree Charani's double-wicket 18th over that went for just four runs rocked MI again. After just 11 runs in the 18th and 19th overs, Sanskriti Gupta's last-ball six helped MI collect 13 from the last over to post 154, their lowest total this season.

DC had the kind of powerplay MI can only dream of this WPL. The MI bowlers strayed often with their lines and Shafali and Lizelle Lee pulled and punched with confidence for boundaries to try and wipe out a good chunk of the target in the first six. They collected three fours each off Nicola Carey and Sanskriti in the second and sixth overs respectively, and the others in between for two fours each. With 57 smashed in the powerplay, DC had brought the asking run rate down to seven an over.

WPL debutant and left-arm spinner Vaishnavi Sharma, a replacement for the injured G Kamalini, started to loop deliveries from wide of the crease that made DC's job tougher to dispatch the ball to boundaries. Amanjot Kaur was frugal too and she accounted for Lee with a stumping through a wide down leg, although it took several replays for the third umpire Ajitesh Argal to conclude Lee's bat was in the air and foot on the line when the bails came off. The boundaries dried up for 20 balls, the equation became a stiff 51 off 36, but Rodrigues was determined to see the chase through.

She scooped, swept, reverse swept - all while staying low on the pitch - and smacked a six over midwicket to not let the pressure get to her. One of her shots even had Wolvaardt run-out at the non-striker's end with a deflection off Sciver-Brunt's hand, but Rodrigues kept her nerve to beat the defending champions.