Retired out to returning not out — the Harleen story

Harleen Deol couldn’t believe her eyes when she was instructed by the team management to retire out and return to the dugout. By then, she was just three runs short of her fifty, and the decision clearly came as a shock.

UP Warriorz’ bold move backfired as the middle-order fumbled and eventually paved the way for Delhi Capitals’ victory.

But as they say, cricket is a great leveller.

Less than 24 hours later, Harleen redeemed herself with an unbeaten 39-ball 64 to guide Warriorz to their first win of the WPL season, against Mumbai Indians.

It wasn’t easy for her to forget what happened and turn up afresh. But then, this is what professional sport is all about, it teaches one not to not stress on what happened in the past, and just keep contributing.

Harleen, too, believes in such a mindset. No wonder, she dead-batted questions on the ‘retire out’ episode, and just stressed on the fact that she ‘batted well’ on both days.

Indeed so. Though her strike rate was relatively low (130.55) against Capitals, she had set the tone for Warriorz along with Meg Lanning, and on Thursday, she did even better. With some crisp drives, she improved her strike rate (164.10).

Though Harleen’s expressions spoke otherwise as she walked back after being retired out, Warriorz head coach Abhishek Nayar claimed that the former was aware of the decision. “It wasn’t like a very spontaneous decision. The conversation started around the 12th over when we first sent a message to Meg, while they were batting together and we felt what was the right time to get our power-hitters in, that was the thought process,” Nayar said.

“Post the timeout, Meg decided to have a go, and Harleen as well. We had already communicated to Harleen that if we don’t get going till the 16th or 17th over, we will look for a change. So, that communication had started way before”.

Harleen, as Nayar said, put the team first, took things in her stride and moved on. Only to turn up the next day and silence her critics.

The scores: Mumbai Indians 161/5 in 20 overs (Amanjot Kaur 38, Nat Sciver-Brunt 65, Nicola Carey 32 n.o.) lost to UP Warriorz 162/3 in 18.1 overs (Harleen Deol 64 n.o.). Toss: Warriorz; PoM: Harleen.