In the last over of the 2024 Hundred final between Welsh Fire and London Spirit, the equation for the Spirit was as follows: Four runs required off three deliveries. At that juncture, Deepti Sharma, the Indian all-rounder, backed her gut feel and decided to provide the finishing touches off the very next ball. The move paid off as Deepti charged down the deck and deposited one over the long-on boundary. On expected lines, it was followed by wild celebrations, with Deepti pumping her fists in delight and her ecstatic teammates running on to the pitch to hug her.
The larger picture to emerge from London’s first-ever Hundred triumph was that Deepti had backed her instincts. “With four runs needed off three balls, I thought that the match had to be finished at this moment and on this delivery, instead of dragging it to the last two-three balls, as the mindset was to finish off the game as quickly as possible,” said Deepti in a conversation with IANS on the sidelines of CEAT Cricket Rating Awards in Mumbai.
“I thought that I must take that responsibility on myself to finish off the game, because I was the only set batter at that time and that’s how finishing the game on this very delivery emerged in my mind.”
From Deepti’s perspective, that particular shot and her stellar show in the Hundred would have boosted her confidence while chasing down targets. Incidentally, her numbers for the just-concluded competition read as follows – 212 runs at an average of 212 and at a strike-rate of just over 132.
Just to illustrate the point further, Deepti averaged a mere 12.85 at a strike-rate of 83.3 during the 2023 WPL season, in comparison to 295 runs at a strike rate of 136 in this year’s WPL. It is clearly evident that her off-side game has become better. She has also fine-tuned her mindset towards batting. “The things which I followed during the WPL, I am going to follow again in the upcoming matches during the World Cup,” she said.
“It’s just that I have changed my mindset a bit. Like whatever the situation is, just be positive about it. The biggest thing though is, just enjoy, as in pressure situations, one can’t enjoy. But if you enjoy being in those situations, then all of the phases in those scenarios go out smoothly.”
For long, Deepti was known for her tidy spin bowling and fine fielding in the shortest version of the game. However, all the hard work seems to have paid off as she has also polished her batting skills down the order. She is now an upgraded version of the player who couldn’t steer her side home in the gold-medal match of the 2022 Commonwealth Games against Australia. India, for one, would hope for Deepti to continue her golden run in the upcoming T20 World Cup in the United Arab Emirates.