‘Maybe the occasion just got to the players’ – Jonathan Batty on DC’s heartbreak

Three seasons, three finals – all being direct entries by topping the league stage, only to stumble at the final hurdle. The Delhi Capitals franchise are understandably despondent after going down in @L0$, especially after having done a reasonable job in the first half of the game. However, like they often do, Mumbai Indians managed step up in the key moments of the final to get across the line.

DC head coach Jonathan Batty quashed claims that his players felt the pressure of having lost two previous finals.

"The girls have been really positive, I can't fault them. There has been no negative talk at all like 'Oh we've messed up the last two finals, we're going to take that baggage into this one', none of that. I thought they were really positive, really confident. The girls have been fantastic, they trained superbly."

"I don't think there is a mental block at all. If you look at the way we performed with the ball, we did a great job to keep them to 149 on that wicket. We have seen what had happened in the elimination game and the other games here. We were expecting 180 to be a par score, so we were really happy with that. The players were ready for it, so I don't think there was a mental block at all."

True to Batty's words, DC had made a strong start to the final with the early wickets of Hayley Matthews and Yastika Bhatia, courtesy Marizanne Kapp's sensational new ball spell. MI could only muster 20 runs off the PowerPlay as the tone was set by DC's bowlers. Unfortunately for Meg Lanning's girls, Harmanpreet Kaur came to the party on the big night alongside Nat Sciver-Brunt. Their 83-run stand threatened to push MI past the 160-170 mark but DC then broke the stand and fought back hard to keep the total to 149. It was a gettable score but DC faltered in the chase to go down by eight runs.

"Everyone's hurting a huge amount at the moment. I think 99 percent of the time you back yourself to chase 150 on that wicket there today. Big match finals, maybe the occasion just got to the players but full credit to Mumbai Indians for the way they defended that total. They made it really hard for us and we were never ahead in the chase. We were in the game all the way through, just couldn't get over the line."

Harmanpreet's counterattacking 44-ball 66 proved to be the decisive knock on the big night as the MI skipper was the only batter who managed to bat at a high tempo in the contest. She did take her time initially, unlike her usual methods at the crease this season but once the veteran got going, she gave a pasting to DC's bowlers. Sciver-Brunt played second fiddle but she was no less effective as the pair helped Mumbai to claw their way back after a horror start to the game. Batty wasn't critical of his side's efforts during the middle overs when Harmanpreet went berserk.

"With players like Harmanpreet and Nat Sciver-Brunt, a lot of planning went into it and I thought we actually kept them calm for a while there, especially Sciver-Brunt. She had a great tournament scoring over 500 runs, so we have been planning about her and executed them really well today. Harmanpreet was fantastic, her innings was probably the difference between the two teams today."

Losing another final would have hurt skipper Meg Lanning the most, given the Aussie's penchant for winning silverware in international cricket. That said, franchise competitions haven't been kind to the Australian legend and with the WPL slipping away thrice in a row, the 32-year-old will be gutted, particularly at a time when her batting form hasn't been what it used to be. The inevitable challenge of aging has seen Lanning show technical vulnerabilities amidst the odd good knock but Batty threw his weight behind the DC captain.

"She is thriving in the captaincy and leadership role again. She played some good knocks in the tournament and led a really good group of players for three years."

The roller-coaster nature of the final saw plenty of ebbs and flows, with both teams exchanging punches at various intervals. At the end of it all, DC fell short by the thinnest of margins. Strangely, for all the high-scoring games at the venue, the final proved to be a low-scoring thriller. While there is obvious disappointment of not sealing the elusive title, Batty felt that it was too early to start the post-mortem of the summit clash and didn't feel there was a pattern to the losses in finals.

"We're all hurting. It's going to take some time to think through what went wrong. and that's cricket as well. You've got two great quality teams going head-to-head and it was such a tight game. You lose by eight runs, which is two boundaries. We lost that by two balls in the end. It can go either way. I don't think there was a common denominator (in the three finals). There will be a winning side and a losing side. We've been on the losing side three times unfortunately".