‘We just didn’t bowl one good ball, which was needed in the last over’: MI skipper Harmanpreet Kaur after Nadine de Klerk guides RCB to thrilling win in WPL opener

Nadine de Klerk dragged Royal Challengers Bengaluru out of the mire and helped them win by 3 wickets. (Express Photo | Amit Chakravarty)

Exactly 3 months ago, India skipper Harmanpreet Kaur had to witness South Africa’s Nadine de Klerk take the match away from her Indian team with a blistering 84 runs in the Women’s World Cup group stage. That was on October 9. On Friday, i.e. on January 9, Harman would again stand helplessly, this time as the Mumbai Indians captain, as de Klerk dragged Royal Challengers Bengaluru out of the mire and helped them win by 3 wickets.

“Well, we know that she (de Klerk) has the capacity to score whatever runs are needed in the last over. But yeah, I think we just didn’t bowl one good ball, which was needed in the last over. Sometimes this happens. We gave her two or three chances and when you keep giving a batter chances, they always come back with an even stronger mindset. So yeah, we can’t say the last over didn’t go our way – we got a few chances, but we missed them,” Harman said after the match.

On what they could have done differently, Kaur reiterated that one good ball in the last over would have done the trick.

“I think one good ball in the last over – that’s all. Otherwise, I think we were in the game. We did everything that was needed to win this match, but except for that last over. If we could have bowled one good ball, we could have won the match. Well, in the WPL, we always get matches like this. And we know that if we keep thinking about this game, it’s not going to help us tomorrow. So I think we just need to learn from this match and think about how we can do better in the next one,” she added.

de Klerk was also devastating with the ball as well when she took 4 wickets to restrict Mumbai to 154/6 but her batting overshadowed her bowling prowess on the night. Even RCB captain Smriti Mandhana harked back to that night vs South Africa at Vizag while comparing Friday’s win.

“Yeah, we saw that in Visakhapatnam when she played that innings against us. And I was just telling our head coach, Malolan, that I think we were in a similar situation against South Africa in the World Cup match, and she pulled it off,” she said.