Follow UsJess Jonassen walked into the Delhi Capitals vs Mumbai Indians marquee clash in the Women’s Premier League (WPL) after a great batting show in her previous game. With the ball, though, she was taken to the cleaners by Bharti Fulmali of the Gujarat Giants.
But as they say, ‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man Woman’, and Jonassen brought her A game out right at the moment that mattered.
While Jonassen took 3/25, her wickets in the game were interspersed between the spells of the four talented pacers that the Capitals had on display.
Shikha Pandey and Marizanne Kapp were phenomenal at the start with their swing bowling, aided brilliantly by the green tinge on the pitch helped the ball move finely early on.
The openers, Hayley Matthews and Yastika Bhatia, added 35 for the first wicket but did not look fluent one bit. Runs were hard to come by due to the discipline shown by the Delhi pacers.
The Mumbai side were not given breathing space even as Kapp and Pandey completed their spell as Annabel Sutherland and Titas Sadhu were brought into the attack.
Even as the pacers were changed, Jonassen, who did not flight the ball throughout the match and kept on attacking the stumps with her back-of-length deliveries, got most of the success as she had the wickets of the top MI batters, Natalie Sciver-Brunt, Harmanpreet Kaur and youngster G Kamalini.
Because of the pressure built by the pacers in which all of them, apart from Sadhu, bowled with an economy rate of less than six (Kapp-5.33, Pandey- 4, Sutherland- 5.21), Jonassen, who was going over six, got the advantage, with batters wanting to get after her. As a result, Sciver-Brunt was caught and bowled for 18 off 22 while Harmanpreet was trapped in front, unable to read a straight ball that did not turn at all.
Kamalini, very new at the crease, could not get her eyes set and was bowled by Jonassen as well.
Even Minnu Mani, the other spinner, got two wickets of dangerous batters, Ameilia Kerr and Sajana Sajeevan, thanks to the pressure built by the tight bowling of the pacers and the wickets taken by Jonassen.
It is only safe to say that one of the most incredible batting lineups in the WPL, with world-famous names in Hayley Matthews, Sciver-Brunt, Harmanpreet and Kerr, were choked by the DC pacers and then killed by the spin of Jonassen.