Mooney, Dottin, Kanwar hand Giants massive win to jump to second

Gujarat Giants 186 for 5 (Mooney 96*, Deol 45, Ecclestone 2-34) beat UP Warriorz 105 (Henry 28, Harris 25, Gautam 3-11, Kanwar 3-17) by 81 runs

It was not quite a happy homecoming for UP Warriorz, who got a thrashing from Gujarat Giants at the Ekana Stadium and slipped from third to last place on the points table. In the first WPL match in Lucknow, Beth Mooney put on a batting exhibition to help Giants to 186 for 5, the third-highest total this season. She provided a reminder of why she is the No. 1-ranked T20I batter in the ICC rankings, and helped Giants vault from fifth place to second.

In reply, Warriorz went down with a whimper, losing by a massive 81 runs. They lost two wickets in the first over, four inside the powerplay and were 48 for 6 – only one batter in the top six scored in double-digits – before Chinelle Henry‘s 14-ball 28 helped them cross 100. They were eventually bowled out for 105 as Giants became only the second team to successfully defend a score – the first, incidentally, being Warriorz – this season.

Mooney scored a 59-ball 96 not out and was involved in a 101-run second-wicket partnership with Harleen Deol. She hit 17 fours in her innings, the second-most in an innings in the WPL.

Thanks to the mammoth win, Giants’ net run rate shot up to 0.357 from -0.450 and they are now placed only behind Delhi Capitals, their six points taking them level with Mumbai Indians, whose NRR is 0.166.

Mooney puts on a batting masterclass

It looked like this was not Mooney’s season. Heading into the contest, she had tallied only 84 in five innings, averaging a mere 16.80. Since Giants don’t have a spare wicketkeeper in the squad, she continued to be backed. She started slow, being 23 off 21 when the powerplay ended, helped by a couple of fours in a Deepti Sharma over.

But it was after the field restrictions ended that Mooney truly came into her own. She used her feet against both Sophie Ecclestone and Deepti, and used the pace of Henry and Kranti Goud. Whenever Warriorz had mid-off and mid-on up and bowled length, she used her feet to access the area down the ground and peppered the straight boundary for 49 runs in the arc between long-on and long-off. At one point it looked like she would hit the first century of the WPL but she got to face only five balls at the death (overs 17-20) and finished unbeaten on 96.

Full report to follow…

S Sudarshanan is a sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo. @Sudarshanan7