Harmanpreet’s masterclass: How MI’s skipper turned the WPL final around

There came a point in the 11th over of Mumbai Indians' innings when you knew Harmanpreet Kaur was in her zone. After being hit for two consecutive sixes in the cover-point region, Delhi Capitals skipper Meg Lanning had amped up security in the region by bringing Shafali Verma to extra cover boundary. Then she had a quick chat with her bowler, Jess Jonassen, perhaps advising on what the next delivery should be to the Mumbai Indians skipper. To her credit, Jonassen executed the plan to perfection – a good length ball sliding in on middle and leg – but the way Harmanpreet made room for herself to crisply thread the gap and beat Verma's running effort to the fence was an ominous sign for DC.

Lanning had brought Jonassen into the attack based on the matchups. Annabel Sutherland – who had dismissed Harmanpreet six times in 17 T20s before the WPL 2025 final – had just been carted for a six and a four, and the DC skipper had resorted to her most-trusted bowler. Jonassen too had dismissed Harmanpreet a dozen times in the 23 T20s they've faced off in previously, but the way the MI skipper toyed with her fields @L0$ was as if foreshadowing the plot twist.

After losing both their openers to Marizanne Kapp by the first-half of the fifth over, Harmanpreet was walking in to bat inside the PowerPlay only for the third time in the 10 games of WPL 2025, with DC firmly on top. She came to the middle at 14/2 and by the close of PowerPlay, after being put in to the bat in the finale, MI were tottering at 20/2 and in desperate need of a rescue act from their captain and vice-captain. Given the situation and the occasion, Harmanpreet afforded herself a handful of deliveries to settle in to steady the ship, contrary to her quick-starting ways in this season of the WPL. But once she had got her eye in, she took the attack to the DC bowlers.

From 11 off 15 balls before the start of the Sutherland over, Harmanpreet trumped negative match-ups, and a dodgy knee, to collect 55 in the next 29 deliveries of her stay and throw the DC in a spin. The counterattack and the acceleration were so rapid, and timely, it caught Delhi off guard and made Nat Sciver-Brunt, the tournament Orange Cap holder, look like a second fiddle at the other end. The two timeouts were bookended by single-digit scores, but MI plundered 59 runs in the five overs between them, with their skipper leading the charge and scoring 42 of those.

WPL 2025 has usually seen Harmanpreet try to up the ante almost as soon as she gets in. Her strike-rate in the first-10 deliveries of the 10 WPL 2025 innings collectively is 146.83 despite the 6 off 10 she was at today – a marked improvement from 97.53 in WPL 2023 and 80 in WPL 2024. Her boundary percentage was 12.34 and 9.09 in the past two seasons, and has seen an impressive jump to 21.51% in this edition. Harmanpreet may have gone on record to say that the batting freedom she enjoys in the MI setup is owed to the quality batters she has a cushion of before and after her no. 4 spot. It isn't without reason that she is MI's second-highest run-maker of all time with her tally of 851 only breached by Sciver-Brunt (1027). Deep down, however, Harmanpreet also knows she's the heart and soul of this batting order – more so in situations like these.

It was just last year that a batting capitulation in Eliminator against RCB had cost MI a shot at back-to-back titles. After Harmanpreet's departure at a crucial juncture – in the 18th over – in a modest 135-run chase, her team had failed to get the last 16 runs required off 12 deliveries. In their (inconsequential) last league game against the same opposition, her dismissal for a duck triggered a middle-order collapse that left the team with a sub-par total of 113. After both those games, a hurting Harmanpreet publicly demanded for more middle-order contributors to step up. In yet another league game from the 2024 edition, she was guilty of leaving too much to do in the end – 72 required off 30 deliveries to be precise – which she had miraculously pulled off to her credit, but learnings from the business end of that season had led to an inward inspection and fuelled her desire to shed the safety-first approach.

Look no further than the @L1$ at the very venue. Harmanpreet had arrived in the middle on the back of a second-wicket century stand between Sciver-Brunt and Hayley Matthews, and blasted a boundary-filled 12-ball 36 not out – which for all practical purposes proved the differentiator. On Saturday in the final, when the situation demanded more tact, Harmanpreet obliged but also did not forget the renewed batting approach that's worked wonders for her team this season. She tapped into all the experience of playing on the Brabourne tracks – thrice in four days before the finale – and expertly swapped caution for aggression to set up MI's match-winning total of 149. The skipper backed herself with some calculated risks, and the way it paid off threw DC's early advantage out the window.

"I think it's helped that we played three games here. We knew that we could catch up later on in the innings," said Charlotte Edwards, MI head coach. "And it was always hard – the first six overs at this ground, we always felt there was something in the pitch. She just read the conditions brilliantly. She knew which bowlers to be aggressive against. I mean, it was just such a great innings and really set us up."

Edwards' counterpart Jonathan Batty too doffed his hat to the brilliant Harmanpreet who led from the front, and played a pivotal part in confining Delhi to a third straight defeat in as many final appearances. "I thought Harman took the attack to us," Batty said after the narrow defeat. "I thought we bowled pretty well but she took a few risks and got away with it because she backed herself to do that."

That there was a clinical bowling effort backing up Harmanpreet's game-changing 66* off 44 deliveries led MI to successfully defend a sub-par score of 149. The skipper lauded her bowling unit for making "150 look like 180" with the way they kept a tight leash on DC to restrict them to 141 in reply. But ask any of those bowlers – many of whom were front-benchers in the dugout joining in the crowd's chants during the Harmanpreet carnage – and they'd tell you where that belief stemmed from.