Some positives, some areas to work on, some last minute changes. Mumbai Indians’ Head Coach had a pretty eventful time leading up to the game, and summed up the match for us in the post-match interview. Excerpts..

On the batting powerplay

We definitely would have liked a batter powerplay than we had with the bat.

On having a happy headache of choosing the four overseas players

It’s been really good to have quality overseas players that makes you stay up at night wondering what the right combination is. That’s always tricky. Nicola Carey has come in and has played really well. We thought she would start on the bench and play when needed, but she has performed really well. We have five really strong overseas players who can win three stages throughout the game. We’ve got quality players who can win the powerplay, middle overs and the death. It’s working out the right combination and what that looks like. We have had a lot of time working out what the best combination is.

On Hayley Matthews missing out                                                                                                                                

We had some fun and games before the toss really. Amanjot was warming up and she twisted her knee and it looked like she wasn’t going to be able to bowl, which would then have left us with two seamers. With Nat (Sciver-Brunt) being sick and coming in, we were confident she would bowl her four overs, but it wasn’t a guarantee. So we had to make a quick change to our lineup and see how Amanjot pulls up. 

On Nalla Kranthi Reddy and Triveni Vasistha

Kranthi has been working really hard. Her action is slightly different and unique which could come into her favour when she gets her opportunity. She is exciting and has done a really good job in domestic cricket. When she gets her opportunity, it will be really nice to see what she can do. Triveni, obviously, a left-arm spinner, tall, and is working hard on what sort of balls she needs to execute at this level. They both will have some parts to play at some stage. Triveni is playing, and her role will be that one or two overs in the match within the match, or depending on the lineup, if we need more spinners, she’s got the opportunity to bowl four overs. Today she was in as that bowler if we needed, but the dew made it pretty tough out there. Specially with Nic Carey going off.

Areas to improve before the next game

Getting off to a better start in the powerplay. We haven’t done that in the last four games that we’ve played. We just didn’t execute, we gave (Harleen) Deol too much width. If you look at her wagon wheel it is pretty obvious that we mis-executed and gave her too much width. To her credit, she had a good day. There’s plenty of things to have a look over the next day, we’ll come back and go again.