When the Harmanpreet of old took centre stage

You're in control. You can smell victory. It seems like you're in the home stretch. Your poor start - losing the first four games - seems so far away now. Victory looms. There's still one big threat to see off.

Harmanpreet Kaur's lofted hit to long-on is grassed by Phoebe Litchfield. Sneh Rana thumps the ground with an open palm. Beth Mooney can't bear to look on. Suddenly, Gujarat Giants, who had the game in their grasp, are gasping. Mumbai Indians should've been 121 for 4 in the 16th over chasing 191.

Harmanpreet was on 20 off 21 at one stage, pushed to a point of no return. She simply had to tee off, and she did. By finding her hitting range that was mostly married with precision, barring that dropped opportunity. Harmanpreet didn't have time to rue the false shot, it merely got her to be a bit more decisive in her footwork.

For the next 20 minutes, everyone in the Mumbai dug out sat transfixed as she sent the ball soaring over her favorite arcs, between cow corner and long-on. The two steps down the track to get to the pitch of the ball seemed like pure intimidation.

Even someone as experienced as Ash Gardner wasn't spared. It was in essence a knock where she stripped her game down to the bare basics of see-ball-hit-ball. It was an exhibition of instinctive batting, where she seemed to have found the one batting gear she'd missed early in her innings, and one she wasn't willing to let go off until the end.

Soon after she was dropped, in the 18th over, Harmanpreet ransacked 24 runs off the same bowler, Rana, and it highlighted everything that makes her such a fearsome prospect to bowl to.

Long-off and long-on were straighter, in the corner of her eye, specifically for the shot down the ground. Yet, Harmanpreet's picked her gap. The bottom hand was at work. She couldn't have drilled the ball with ferocity otherwise.

This was enough to get Rana thinking. In trying to overcorrect, she followed up with a slot ball. Harmanpreet sent it over the long-off boundary. Then Rana went wide of the crease, only for the full toss to be heaved to midwicket. A slight conference with Mooney later, Rana went around the stumps. Deep midwicket and a wide long-on for the heave. Long-off was at the rope, with point and cover on the offside inside the ring. Harmanpreet was ticking fast, and in a split-second read the plan of bowling a wide yorker. She took it on the full and bludgeoned it into the gap between cover and mid-off. That over read: 4, 0, 6, 4, 4, 6. From a daunting 47 off 18, the equation had thinned to 23 off 12.

Harmanpreet finished unbeaten on 95 off 48 balls. It was her second half-century of WPL 2024. The upturn in form made you wonder if she'd done something differently. It turns out she had.

Harmanpreet couldn't buy a run during the white-ball series when England and Australia toured back-to-back in December-January. She had six single digit scores in seven innings where she was dismissed. Afterwards, she admitted to being fatigued by the thought of picking up a bat.

So she headed home to Patiala and trained with her coach without the pressures of performance. It was simply an exercise in bringing back the enjoyment factor. In trying to bat slightly differently, Harmanpreet revealed she had deviated from her methods. She went back to the drawing board and rediscovered her old self with Himanshu bhaiyya - her personal coach. She'd got her mojo back.

The proof of that has been seen at the WPL. The Harmanpreet of old is back, and she is hitting the ball fearlessly and making spinners uneasy at the crease. The intimidation has taken new forms too - like the reverse paddle she plays with the back of the blade.

"She has days when she's really firing, today was one of those days," Mumbai vice-captain Nat Sciver-Brunt said afterwards. "When she came off the field [before the chase], she was very focused. Melie [Amelia Kerr] said she had that look in her eye while she was batting with her at the end. She just knew what she needed to do and execute it."

Sciver-Brunt went on a bit more about how zoned in Harmanpreet is on game day. "When she is training or around the hotel, she is relaxed, involved with the group, very social. On game day, she is a lot more focused and has probably a bit more of a tunnel vision on what the task is.

"When she bats, she is not often flustered about things. Like if she hasn't got off to a quick start, we're on the side thinking 'could she get off strike a bit more' but as we saw today, she didn't need to. She believes in her abilities, she's played some special knocks in international cricket and WPL over the years. When the pressure is on, she enjoys being out there."

Until Saturday, she'd only given glimpses of this new avatar. But now, it was full-blown carnage, a throwback to that memorable day in Derby in 2017 when she made an entire country embrace women's cricket and bring it to the big time.

That day, too, Gardner was at the receiving end of her onslaught. That day, too, she saw Harmanpreet deposit balls into the stands at deep midwicket to deliveries most batters would look to hit straight. That's Harmanpreet's essence. Someone who has that belief and power to access her favorite areas at will.

It's a scary prospect because she can hit the same ball over long-off or extra cover when in beast mode, like she was on Saturday. No situation seemed out of control, not even when the asking rate touched 15. She had her confidence back. She was dominating spin again. And Giants had plenty of spin up their sleeve.

When in full flow, Harmanpreet's is a game without half measures. She's all in. The swing is clean, connection even better. She can achieve this because of her footwork - the decision to go forward or back is made very quickly.

This was the flavor of Harmanpreet's Saturday special. It was clinical, methodical, had the slice of luck she needed, and then once all these elements synced, it was unlocking of beast mode that bowlers around the world have come to dread.

She hit five sixes, ten fours and missed WPL's first century by a whisker. But she'd given enough and more for the highlights reel, one that she can fondly look back on next time she's in a form slump. And feel good all over again.

Harmanpreet of old was back, and how.