NAVI MUMBAI: Just before the fourth season of the Women’s Premier League began, UP Warriorz head coach Abhishek Nayar, while explaining his decision to appoint Australian legend Meg Lanning as the captain of his team, said, “Having Meg there makes things a lot easier for me because she is going to take all the pressure.” I’ll be relaxing, having a coffee. So there is no pressure. “I’m very excited,” Nayar said. However, after his team suffered three straight defeats at the start of their campaign, the former India and Mumbai player would have realized that being the head coach of a franchise team is not such an easy job after all, even if you appoint a great player as captain.
On Wednesday night, during their seven-wicket loss to Delhi Capitals at the DY Patil Stadium, UP Warriorz made a mistake which they later had to regret.To get some quick runs to the death, they decided to retire Harleen Deol, who was batting at a decent pace, with UP Warriorz (UPW) at 141 for four after 17 overs. The India batsman had scored 47 off 36 balls (a strike rate of 130.55) with the help of seven fours. However, the decision backfired spectacularly as UPW lost six wickets in 20 runs and finished at 154 for eight in 20 overs.Explaining what happened in the dugout and the reason behind the move, UPW mentor Lisa Sthalekar said in the post-match press conference: “He (Nayar) turns to me and says, ‘I think this is the moment we need to potentially get Harleen out.’ And I was like, ‘Ooh, okay, this is not a normal thing in women’s football.’ the limits. So it was decided (to remove her). And then he (Nayar) talked, I think, with Meg (Lanning, the captain) and a couple of coaches quickly to make sure we were all on the same page. And then we pulled the trigger.”On Tuesday, Ayushi Soni made history when she became the first retired player in the WPL. However, unlike the experienced Harleen, Ayushi is not limited and was making her WPL debut for the Gujarat Giants. With the next batsman, Bharti Phulmali, smashing 36 not out off 15 balls, GG’s decision worked perfectly well. Unluckily for UPW, the batsmen following Deol-Chloe Tryon, Sophie Ecclestone and Deepti Sharma failed.Sthalekar revealed that the idea was to “maximize the last three overs”, although he felt the idea of returning a set to a batsman was risky. “The only thing I questioned was, I think, Meg came out and I said to her, ‘If we get her (Deol) out next, then you’re going to have two new batsmen (at the crease).’ Like I said, sometimes these things work and we look like geniuses. And sometimes they don’t. And that is why we love this game of cricket. It keeps us on our toes,” Sthalekar said.On 10 April 2022, India great Ravichandran Ashwin became the first batsman to be tactically retired in the IPL, for the Rajasthan Royals against the Lucknow Super Giants at the Wankhede Stadium, during IPL-2022. Ashwin had been promoted to number 6 in the 10th over. Since then, many batsmen have been dropped by their teams in search of quick runs in a format where the par score has continued to rise.“I think the game continues to evolve and if we remain stuck in the past, then someone is going to surprise us in terms of why people retire players, it is because they probably feel there is still more power to come. And if you are trying to capitalize on the last few overs, you want the balls to hit boundaries easily. And that is why several teams, in a recent period, have decided to retire a player and bring in firepower. Sometimes it works, and we’ve seen that at the Big Bash. [League] recently, and sometimes it’s not,” Sthalekar said.Meanwhile, despite UPW opener Kiran Navgire’s poor run of form (he was out for a three-ball duck after scores of five and one in the first two games), Sthalekar backed the Maharashtra big-hitter, calling her an “X factor”. “Kiran hasn’t clicked for us yet. But one thing about her is that she’s not going to eat balls, right? She’s willing to take on the bowlers. And we just hope that the work that she’s been doing leading up to this tournament, and then also in the lead-up to these matches and the plans that she has, talking to the coaching staff, she’ll be able to get, I guess from our point of view, one away so she can go, ‘Okay, I can do this.’ Because you would have seen how destructive it can be. So she is a real X factor,” Sthalekar said.