Lucknow welcomed us for our first-ever WPL game in the city as we took on the Gujarat Giants with an eye towards a dominating finish of our league stages.

Our dynamic duo of Shafali Verma and Meg Lanning were at it once again, giving us an ideal start to our innings. While Shafali departed after a well-played 27-ball 40, skipper Meg took on the charge to carry on.

During her knock, Meg reached the landmark of 900 runs in the WPL, first player to achieve it. She also notched up her ninth fifty in the competition, the most by any player.

Even though we found it to continue our batting momentum in the second half of our innings, Meg’s controlled aggression in a knock which consisted of 15 fours and one six, made sure we were always in hunt of a good score. She missed out her century by just eight runs.

Sarah’s first ball six and Meg’s batting in the death overs ensured we scored 177 for 5 in our 20 overs.

As the second innings started, dew at the ground started hurting our chances of defending what could have been a good score at the Ekana International Cricket Ground. Strikes from Minnu Mani, Shikha Pandey and Jess Jonassen kept us in the game.

Shikha was especially impressive with the ball, picking up the wickets of Dayalan Hemalatha and Ashleigh Gardner during her spell and also bowled some economical overs.

Fielding was one of our positives during a run chase, which didn’t go according to our plan otherwise. After Annabel pounced on a very difficult one on the boundary, Jemimah’s running and diving catch made all the noise of social media. However, it wasn’t enough for us to get our two points.

Even though we gulped the tough loss, the team will be looking forward to their match in Mumbai next, having already made it through the playoffs. With five wins from our eight matches, we are placed to either play the elimination match on 13th March or directly qualify for the final on 15th March.

We will have to sit tightly and wait for the other results as we prepare for our one final roar this season.

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