Gujarat Giants finally broke the jinx and notched their first win against the Mumbai Indians in WPL!
👊 Gardner’s decisive middle-overs punch
It felt like a tale of two middle-order tournament leaders and the middle overs between 11 and 16. The fate of the game was sealed when one of them delivered, while the other fell early.
In the leaderboard for most runs scored this WPL in overs 11 to 16, it’s Ashleigh Gardner leading the charts with 143 runs at a strike rate of 181—the second-highest strike rate on the list. She’s also been brilliant at strike rotation, with a dot-ball percentage of just 22.7% in this period.
Second on that list is MI’s Nat Sciver-Brunt, with 134 runs, striking at a whopping 203 and an incredibly low dot-ball percentage of just 13.6%. Her strike rate—the highest on the list—coupled with that kind of rotation capability, is a menace to bowlers.
At some level, the outcome of the game was always going to hinge on how these batters helped their teams in the middle phase.
Gardner walked in at 69 for 2 in the 10th over, with Gujarat entering a rebuilding phase as Mumbai Indians’ bowlers chipped away with a couple of quick wickets. She spent her time and rotated strike on a pitch that was by no means the easiest to bat on, with a fair amount of grip and turn on offer.
At the end of the 15th over, Gardner was 18 off 17 deliveries—not looking her fluent best. But she’d clearly spent enough time in the middle to know the pace of the wicket and the kind of matchup she’d want to take on: spin. Over the past year, she’d struck at 155.9 while averaging 39.8 against off-spin, and 29.7 while striking at 181.6 against leg-break.
When Hayley Matthews came on to bowl in the 16th over, it was always going to be a Gardner show. Given the matchup, given that she was set, and given that Gujarat needed to get a move on, Gardner went: 6, 4, 4, 4, dot, 1—peeling 19 runs off Matthews’ over as momentum shifted toward the Giants.
What at one stage looked like a 145-to-150 total was suddenly propelled to 167. On a pitch where Gujarat’s slow spinners and incredible overseas bowling lineup were lurking, it was never going to be a straightforward chase.
Eventually, that over determined the course of the game. Nat Sciver-Brunt fell early, leaving a huge void in the middle overs with way too much to do for Harmanpreet Kaur. Mumbai eventually lost the game by 11 runs.
Gardner delivered when it mattered. Sciver-Brunt had a rare miss. In a tournament where both have dominated the middle overs, tonight belonged to one—and that made all the difference.
Data from Women’s T20 Batting App using Himanish Ganjoo’s T20 cricket BBB database up until October 2025, Arnav Jain’s fielding toolkit, Cricmetric, Cricket By JB’s WPL analyses & the Broadcast.
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