ESPNcricinfo reviews Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur’s tournament

Annesha Ghosh03-Sep-20192:51

‘KSL one of my best experiences yet’ – Jemimah Rodrigues

Deepti Sharma
A key all-round cog in Western Storm’s title-winning wheel, debutant Deepti’s match-winning 32 and 3 for 18 against defending champions Surrey Stars was her most dominant performance in the group stage. Summoned to bowl in all 11 games for her side, her offspin routinely created chances, some gone a-begging, while others helped make inroads in crunch phases.Deepti Sharma hits out•Getty ImagesIn the final, she broke through a 69-run second-wicket stand, taking out half-centurion Danielle Wyatt, the highest run-scorer in the tournament, when she was at her most destructive. The following ball, a run-out by Fran Wilson, swung the momentum Storm’s way.Limited though the opportunities with the bat were – seven innings, mostly in the lower-middle order – Deepti’s batting smarts, under-utilised across India’s limited-overs sides, pulled Storm through two nail-biting chases.In the league stage, against Lancashire Thunder, she sealed the win with a four off the penultimate ball in a humdinger of a finish, remaining unbeaten on a 14-ball 23. A more emphatic statement of intent came in the final, where, coming in at No. 6 with 70 needed off 45, Deepti hit top gear first ball, carting wristspinner Amanda-Jade Wellington for a four. In a masterful support act to captain Heather Knight’s match-winning fifty, Deepti traded caution for measured aggression, pinching singles square of the wicket on the higher end of the Hove slope to go with her disdainful laps, lofted off-drives and slog-sweeps that saw her finish unbeaten on a 22-ball 39.If Deepti’s new-found abandon while batting is anything to go by, India may have found a T20 finisher they might not have known they had in their ranks.Jemimah Rodrigues
The youngest in the Indian touring party, and only 19 months into her international career, 18-year-old batsman Rodrigues set the KSL 2019 group stage alight with her run spree. A run of form reminiscent of Mandhana’s in KSL 2018, the highlight of Rodrigues’ maiden stint in an overseas league came in a 58-ball 112 not out – her first century in the format and the fastest in tournament history – against 2016 champions Southern Vipers.Jemimah Rodrigues smashes one onto the leg side•Getty ImagesA No. 3 mainstay in the Indian T20I batting order, Rodrigues plied her trade for Yorkshire Diamonds at No. 4 for the first eight of the ten matches, the century coming at the first instance of a promotion to No. 3. Bookended by scores of 4 and 60 – the latter snapping the unbeaten streak of Storm and consigning them their only defeat in this edition – Rodrigues’ season was characterised by fearless strokeplay, squarely eclipsing the more established – and feted – overseas recruit Alyssa Healy on the Diamonds scoresheet.Rodrigues’ on-side dominance, whether lofting pacers over midwicket or shuffling deep and wide towards the off stump to open up the square-leg region against spin, shone through the season, and so did her steel in seeing the team through in tense finishes.Against Thunder and Stars, she rounded out the chases with fours in unbeaten knocks, a task she fell marginally short at in the loss against Vipers. Her dismissal in that game, off the second ball of a superb final over from Suzie Bates, saw Diamonds lose the match by three runs, eventually costing them a knockouts berth.Even then, Rodrigues finished with a rich tally of runs, and the most catches, nine, this season, the pick of those a diving catch just outside the inner circle to dismiss Vipers’ Paige Scholfield.Lots to think about – Smriti Mandhana didn’t have a good time of it in KSL 2019•Getty ImagesSmriti Mandhana
The leading run-scorer and Player of the Tournament last edition, Mandhana blew hot and blew cold in her second season at the KSL. The 23-year-old opener, who finished with the eighth-highest run tally in tournament history, put together four 30-plus scores – including consecutive half-centuries – but fell twice in the 20s, and had five single-digit scores, four of those – 0, 2, 7, 0 – coming in her last four outings.After kicking off her campaign with a 24-ball 32, Mandhana almost chronically sent her lofted shots down the throat of fielders on the leg-side, a trait not seen in her batting since the latter half of the 2017 World Cup during which her form fell off.The miscue – off Vipers pacer Tash Farant – in the final struck a low chord in particular as did the failure to connect with wristspinner Dane van Niekerk’s away-going delivery on the fifth stump, against Surrey Stars, that culminated in a Sarah Taylor stumping.For dismissals of such nature to have occurred after two flamboyant, successive 70-plus knocks, a potential concern with the grip – an issue not alien to her – might be at the heart of her up-and-down run rather than any graver technical or mental troubles.Harmanpreet Kaur had five 30-plus scores on the trot at one stage•Getty ImagesHarmanpreet Kaur
Much like Mandhana, India’s T20I captain had mixed success in her second season at KSL with Lancashire Thunder. Having topped the run-charts midway into the edition, Harmanpreet closed out her tournament with a slew of single-digit returns.Her two half-centuries were among six 30-plus scores in ten innings – all at No. 4 or No. 5; five of them came on the trot: 58 not out, 30, 37, 34 and 50. The sequence also marked a phase where Thunder came closest to victory in what ended as a winless campaign.In a line-up with Harmanpreet as the most established batsman, also their top run-getter this season, whether Thunder could have tried her at No. 3 – a position she batted in only in the nine-overs-a-side game – remains debatable.Harmanpreet also rolled her arm over for six wicketless overs across three games that went for 43 runs, and was part of the Indian trio that routinely holed out to another in the field. Mandhana, Rodrigues and Harmanpreet caught each other four times in six combined innings, an oddity Rodrigues put down to the camaraderie between the players. “I have no explanation, really,” she told ESPNcricinfo, “except it was all because of the love between us Indians.”