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0.96% win probability: RCB and Nadine de Klerk create never-attained before milestone in T20s

Anurag Dasgupta

Nadine de Klerk creates history [Source: ESPNCricinfo/x.com] Nadine de Klerk creates history [Source: ESPNCricinfo/x.com]

The opening match of the Women’s Premier League (WPL) between RCB and MI lived up to its hype, as the former WPL winners, RCB, prevailed in a last-ball thriller to start the campaign with a nerve-wracking victory against the Harmanpreet Kaur-led defending champions.

RCB needed 18 off the last 4 deliveries, and South African batter Nadine de Klerk repeated her World Cup heroics as she hammered Nat Sciver-Brunt with utmost ease and won the game from the jaws of defeat. She struck 6, 4, 6, 4 in the last four balls as the Red Army did the unthinkable and defied all odds to start the tournament with a win.

RCB creates unthinkable record as de Klerk hammers MI

De Klerk won the game from an impossible situation, as after 19.2 overs, RCB had a win probability of less than 1%. Before them, no team had scored more than 15 runs in the last four balls in Women’s T20 cricket, and de Klerk became the first woman to do so.

The winning probability was only 0.96 percent, and it was from there that the RCB finisher sealed the game and became the star of the match as MI was stunned in the last over. The defending champions had the game in the palm of their hands, but Nat Sciver-Brunt allowed the game to slip.

Other milestone attained by de Klerk in WPL

The South African and RCB superstar not only achieved the unthinkable by winning the game from an improbable situation, but she also joined India’s Deepti Sharma in a huge WPL record.

Apart from her unbeaten 63, de Klerk also scalped 4 wickets in the innings to stun the Mumbai Indians' batting lineup. In the process, she became only the second player to attain the feat of bagging a 4-fer and scoring a fifty in the same WPL match.

UP Warriorz all-rounder, Deepti Sharma, was the first player in WPL to achieve the feat. She did it in the 2024 season against the Delhi Capitals when he scalped 4 wickets and scored 59 runs.

How RCB triumphed over MI in WPL opener

The match was supposed to be an even contest, and it lived up to the hype as the match went down to the wire. MI batted first, and they lost a few early wickets before Sajeevan Sajana and Nicola Carey started the repair work and helped the team to reach a respectable total of 154.

In reply, RCB started strong with Smriti Mandhana and Grace Harris going hammer and tongs, but the team lost wickets in the middle-overs before de Klerk turned up the heat. She hardly got any support from the other end, but the Proteas batter kept going and won the game in the last ball of the game.