Niki Prasad's 'Mature Beyond Her Age' Knock Sets Stage For A Bright Future For Delhi Capitals, And WPL
Niki Prasad was desperate to express herself in the WPL. On Saturday, she did that with a Player of the Match performance for Delhi Capitals, giving a glimpse into the franchise and the WPL's bright future.
There aren’t many top-order batters in India who can effortlessly slot in at number six in their first Women’s Premier League (WPL) match. Even fewer can be the second-highest scorer in a chase of 165, with wickets rapidly falling from the other end, against one of the best teams in the world, Mumbai Indians.
Delhi Capitals’ Niki Prasad was awarded Player of the Match on Saturday in recognition of this stupendous achievement. She came to bat at 76/4 in 8.5 overs and stayed at the crease — working singles, taking quick doubles, hitting gaps, playing out difficult overs — till the score was 163 in 19.5 overs.
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She got out trying to play a slog-sweep, not a bad idea to try and finish the game, and left two runs on the board, which Arundhati Reddy finished off.
“This is the first game for me in the WPL," Prasad said after the match. “Wanted to go out there and express myself and make sure DC won. I visualized before the match, knew what I had to do, and got it done. The situation we were in, just singles would not have been enough. I wanted to get calculative boundaries along with the singles. Looking at the big players and legends, I am excited and motivated to give my best."
Her first two boundaries of WPL came against Amelia Kerr, no less. On her third and 13th balls, she brilliantly picked Kerr’s googlies and offered perfectly timed square and cover drives, respectively.
At the death, when the required run rate was at 10, she understood that boundaries need to come at the start of the overs to put pressure on the bowlers. She swept Hayley Matthews on the first ball of the 17th over and pulled Sanjeevan Sajana on the first ball of the 20th to pick her next two fours.
Had the commentators not mentioned that Prasad led India to an Under-19 World Cup title only two weeks ago, it would have been hard to believe that she was not even 20 years old.
Former India captain Mithali Raj, and one of Prasad’s idols, who was famous for playing similar knocks before T20 cricket became only about power-hitting, also recognized that.
“She stepped into a high-pressure match and handled it with remarkable poise. There must have been nerves, but she fought through them brilliantly. Though we didn’t see much of it, her innings today was mature beyond her years. She had solid support from Alice Capsey and Sarah Bryce. In the end, as the game came down to two runs off two balls, she went for a big shot, which will come with experience. But what she has done today for Delhi Capitals is massive," Raj said on JioHotstar after the match.
The Capitals had more experienced options on the bench in Taniya Bhatia and Nandini Kashyap but Prasad’s maturity has been helping her stand out since her early years in cricket. A bonafide prodigy in Karnataka, she made her under-19 debut at just 11 years of age; by 18, she was captaining every age-group side with respect from her teammates and scouts were raving about her technical ability and fitness.
Those skills worked against her when she narrowly missed out on the 2022 Under-19 World Cup squad because she was considered too much of an ‘ODI player’ with limited T20 abilities. Her response was not to sulk but to go back to Bengaluru, and practice day and night on her hitting abilities.
“I was grieving for a while, I was upset about it, but then that impact became a big positive," she told News18 CricketNext last month. “I made sure that that setback should be a learning for me, and [understood] I needed to really, really improve myself, start working really hard because nothing comes easy. You have to go through failures. And that’s when I realized the key – this is a step for me to grow, that this is nothing that can pull me back, this [is] learning and everything is just going to make me go higher."
Also read: Not Just A Prodigy: The Making Of Niki Prasad, India Women’s U-19 Captain
At the World Cup, Prasad hardly got a chance to show what she was about with the bat and with her off-spin because India was too good for most opponents any way. The Capitals would be delighted to have found someone as hungry as her for opportunities and ‘expression’ of her skills.
The penultimate ball slog sweep might have not come off on Saturday, but Prasad is known to hit massive sixes (even beyond 80 meters!) in domestic cricket. She does wear another one of her idols, Rahul Dravid’s kit number, 19, but is determined to become a complete T20 player.
It is a glance into the Capitals’ — and the WPL’s — future which, for now, is looking quite bright.
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