UP Warriorz stayed alive in the 2024 edition of the Women’s Premier League (WPL) with a thrilling last-over win against the Delhi Capitals by just one run on Friday, March 8 at Delhi’s Arun Jaitley Stadium. Despite losing the last game’s player of the match Jemimah Rodrigues in the 18th over, the Capitals were cruising towards victory with 15 runs needed off the last 12 deliveries. However, Deepti Sharma‘s sensational penultimate over which saw her take three wickets including a hat-trick turned it around for the Warriorz before Grace Harris kept her nerves in the final over to get her team over the line.
It was a day that belonged to Deepti and the experienced Indian all-rounder will cherish the memories of that game given she hasn’t been able to churn out performances for her team as she would have liked in the tournament so far. So much so that the fans even blamed her for UPW’s losses and the franchise got the perfect opportunity to get back at the fans saying, “lOL yoU aRe lOSINg bEcauSE of DeePti.”
After a rather quiet tournament by her standards with both bat and ball at the start, Deepti seemed to be coming back to her best as even though it was in a losing cause, she smashed an unbeaten half-century against Mumbai Indians in the last game and Delhi saw what she can do with both bat and ball when on song.
Deepti was promoted in the batting order by the Warriorz to No.3 and despite all the wickets falling around her, she batted sensibly to help her side get to some score that they could challenge the Delhi Capitals team with. It was Deepti’s second successive fifty in the WPL.
Deepti had a couple of quiet overs to start with while bowling before she got into the act in the 14th over of DC’s innings. Having conceded just two runs in the over, Deepti got the big wicket of DC skipper Meg Lanning who was batting on 60.
Deepti followed that up with the wickets of Annabel Sutherland and Arundhati Reddy on the first two wickets of the penultimate over of the innings before adding another scalp of Shikha Pandey to her tally to end up with figures of 4/19 as Warriorz stayed alive in the competition and will need to win their final group stage game against the Gujarat Giants.