It might be close to five months since Meg Lanning announced her international retirement, but she is yet to let go of her competitive edge and honesty while assessing the overall picture, in terms of results.
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On Sunday, following her side’s third straight win in the tournament which catapulted them to the top of the points table, Lanning lamented that Delhi Capitals (DC) had fallen short by a few runs while batting first, especially after an excellent start in the Powerplay.
“We felt short. We felt 20 short, particularly with the start we got ourselves. We felt it was a challenge to get early wickets and we did,” Lanning said at the post-match presentation.
Ironically, the score of 163 runs on the night proved more than enough, thanks to a splendid bowling performance from a bowling unit that is starting to thrive under pressure and stand up and be counted.
On Sunday, DC were forced to make a change after Marizanne Kapp was ruled out of the fixture. In a bid to make up for her loss with the new ball, they decided to blood in Titas Sadhu and hand her a debut. They could afford to try her out because as a unit, the rest of the bowling attack had been consistently performing and Sadhu needn’t have had to look at herself as the main bowler to make the early inroads.
That job was done by the more experienced duo of Shikha Pandey and Jess Jonassen, who had GG reeling at 41 for 3 after the Powerplay. Suddenly, 164 runs looked a fair bit away for them.
Jonassesn, in particular, has made herself almost undroppable with her performances in the last two matches and will hope with the Indian domestic season having come to a close in New Delhi, the surfaces would offer a bit more for the slower bowlers to have a greater say in proceedings,
“You get real value for your shots here, either in the air or along the ground. You need to find the ideal pace, tonight the wicket had a sheen, the quicker you bowl, it skidded on,” Jonassen said after winning the Player of the Match award on Sunday.
If GG thought that after seeing the back of Pandey and Jonassen may have given them some form of opening to capitalise on, they were unfortunately mistaken as it was the turn of the other left-arm spinner to get on to the act.
Radha Yadav last played for India at the T20 World Cup in South Africa last year. Rajeshwari Gayakwad had kept her place in the Indian squad while the likes of Saika Ishaque has made her way into the setup with a fine opening season of the WPL.
As a result, Yadav has found herself out of the reckoning. But her performances for DC in the ongoing season has indicated that she is not one to be ignored, with an impending T20 World Cup in Bangladesh where conditions could be on the slower side and showed why on Sunday, by claiming figures of 3 for 20 in her four overs.
“I think we needed to bowl into the wicket, that’s what all the spinners did. The pitch was slow and stopped a bit. We knew this wasn’t an easy pitch, so we were confident about defending 163,” she said after the match.
In addition to the troika of Pandey, Jonasssen and Yadav, DC have also Alice Capsey and Arundhati Reddy to offer support in the spin and pace departments. All this, combined with the clutch of Kapp, means that heading into the home leg starting on Tuesday they look well on course to dent the chances of the opposition of winning a match.
“You gotta keep winning throughout the tournament and it will be close in terms of the top 3. We will enjoy the win as that’s important and we will be looking forward to going to Delhi. Not too much time to think, which is good in a way. We head off tomorrow and play Tuesday night against a team who are in good form and it’s a great challenge for us. We will enjoy it,” Lanning said,
Time to fly over to Delhi.
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