Nat Sciver-Brunt hit a 38-ball 72 ©BCCI
Moments after Mumbai Indians secured their 2023 Women's Premier League final berth on the back of her scintillating knock of 72*, Nat Sciver-Brunt walked up to her English teammates near the UP Warriorz's dugout and said a polite 'thank you' to Sophie Ecclestone.
It was the last ball of the batting powerplay after Warriorz captain Alyssa Healy had put MI in to bat first on a "belter of a track" in the WPL Eliminator. Since their brisk start, Mumbai had slipped to 31/1 in the beginning of the fifth over, bringing Sciver-Brunt in. They would've been further reduced to 45/2 had Ecclestone held on to the reverse-cupped attempt at mid-off when her England vice-captain tried to loft one over her head. Sciver-Brunt was on six off three balls then. Off the next 35 she would face in the remainder of MI's innings, the Englishwoman collected 66 more game-changing runs - the highlight of which was the batting clinic she put up against arguably the tournament's best spin unit.
Friday's Eliminator had always been billed as a who-blinks-first contest between a side that, at one point, had all its top-four in the Orange Cap race and other boasting of an enviable spin attack that had really come into its own once the pitches slowed down. In fact, the last seven league games at Navi Mumbai's DY Patil Sports Academy had been won by sides chasing with only one side posting a total of 150. MI themselves were twice guilty of having posted sub-par scores batting first, losing both games comprehensively to find themselves in the Eliminator in the first place. Faced with the challenge of posting a defendable total after yet again losing a crucial toss, it was Mumbai's most expensive buy at the WPL player auction - and joint most expensive overseas player in the league - who showed the way.
Just as a young Parshavi Chopra was beginning to dominate - having struck with her first ball to take out a well-set Hayley Matthews and outfoxing Harmanpreet Kaur with her googly - Sciver-Brunt unsettled the legspinner with 4, 4, 6, 4 in the next four deliveries across her two-over spell. The first four was struck powerfully down the ground. The other two were off short balls, brilliantly pulled and punished, while in between was a preemptive shimmy down the track to get to the pitch of a generously flighted delivery and smoke it to the left of the sightscreen. The flurry of boundary hits allowed her captain to settle in.
In Mumbai's first defeat of the season, at the hands of Warriorz, the troika of Ecclestone, Deepti Sharma and Rajeshwari Gayakwad had spun a web with combined figures of 7 for 66 in 12 overs to expose the truth behind MI's (under-tested) batting depth. Ecclestone had won the brief battle with Sciver-Brunt by trapping her LBW cheaply on just 5. Tonight, the allrounder nailed an extra cover drive with textbook perfection to reach a
