When Saima Thakor of UP Warriorz nailed a direct hit against Gujarat Giants a week ago to find Phoebe Litchfield short in the death overs, it proved to be a vital wicket. It kept the Giants down to 142 and the Warriorz chased it down easily. But they haven't won a game since, and have slipped to second from bottom on the points table.
Since that inspiring Thakor effort, her team-mates have taken six catches but also put down four, of which two have been regulation chances. With such a catching conversion rate, Warriorz are going to find it very difficult to finish in the top three for the knockouts.
The first of those two regulation chances was of Royal Challengers Bangalore captain Smriti Mandhana who got a life on 28 and finished on a match-winning 50-ball 80 to power her team to 198.
On Thursday, of their three dropped chances they put down against Mumbai Indians, two were hard to grab. Grace Harris could not hold on to a blazing return catch from Nat Sciver-Brunt, who was then on 4 and finished on a breezy 45 off 31. The second was when Alyssa Healy couldn't pouch an edge from Amelia Kerr off a flat delivery from offspinner Chamari Athapaththu.
But the regulation chance Warriorz will rue is when Sophie Ecclestone gave Kerr another life, in the 19th over, after the ball was struck straight to her at extra cover. They also had misfields which offered extra runs, with Shweta Sehrawat and Harris letting the ball slip in the circle and at the boundary rope respectively to leak boundaries.
According to ESPNcricinfo's data, Warriorz have shelled 13 catches this WPL season of which five have been regulation, both more than any other team. They have also leaked overthrows and have misfielded in other matches, and their uncapped Indians Poonam Khemnar and Dinesh Vrinda have also given opposition batters second lives. Warriorz head coach Jon Lewis had a straightforward explanation for the uncapped or inexperienced Indian players shelling chances.
"I think primarily it's the local Indian domestic players that are dropping balls under the lights and I think it's probably they're not used to the ball coming as fast as it does," Lewis had said after their loss to RCB earlier this week. "It's very hard to perceive depth when the ball is coming out of the sky especially if they go high and the ball comes a little quicker than you expect it under the lights, and I think it's just a little bit of inexperience in terms of playing in the conditions that we are.
"What I would say is that international cricketers hit the ball a lot harder than domestic cricketers do. Therefore, the fielders are under a lot more pressure. And the crowd, don't forget the crowd [in Bengaluru]. That's something the players are not used to as well."
To rectify the issue of catching under lights, the players are unable to replicate that in training because there are matches every evening at the same ground. This year's WPL had 11 games daily at the M Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru and is now seeing nine non-stop league matches at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi. As a result, the teams have had to train at other smaller grounds and have not always had the chance to train with floodlights.
"There aren't many opportunities for us to practice during this tournament," Lewis had said. "We had one practice session here before the tournament started, so it's very hard for us to get facilities to practice under lights here in Bangalore with the regularity of our games. So it's quite a tricky thing to practice and I think over time those players will get used to it."
For the chances going down by the international players, Lewis, who is also the head coach of England, offered a different reason.
"That's a catch I would have expected her to take," he said of the straightforward chance put down by Ecclestone on Thursday. "Again, she said she didn't quite see off the background in the lights somewhere. She didn't pick the ball up. What you also find I think is when you play franchise cricket, a lot of the time the international players will field in different positions than they would normally field when playing for their country. So sometimes they get a little bit surprised by the pace of the ball that comes to them. So Sophie wouldn't normally be at extra cover for us (England), she'd be in a different position.
But she would expect to catch that ball and I would expect her to catch that ball as a coach for UP and for England as well. But yeah, it seems like a bit of a trend in the tournament. There's a lot of balls going down but that's, I suppose, a little bit of lack of experience for a lot of players and especially under the lights."
The team to drop the most catches after Warriorz this WPL is Mumbai, with a total count of 11 of which four have been regulation. Jhulan Goswami, their bowling coach and mentor, however, didn't cite playing under lights as the reason when she was asked about it after their loss to Delhi Capitals, in which Saika Ishaque and Kerr had let catches slip.
"Sometimes these things happen, I'm not going to give you any excuse because of light and all, but sometimes a different venue…girls are not used to it playing in different venues so quickly," she had said. "Overnight you're playing in a different venue, so this is a new thing. They'll probably learn from these things in the coming season because last year we played in one (two) venue and this year within 24 hours we are playing in a different venue."
Goswami did concur with Lewis' theory of teams not getting to practice for fielding on the same grounds where matches were being played.
"So give them a little bit extra time and probably in the coming days they will improve because sometimes the ground dimension is also different and understanding the angles takes you time because you don't even have the time to practice [at that ground]," she had said. "They just practice before the match for 45 minutes, that's all. But if we were getting the chance to practice at this ground a day before the game, get used to the angles and dimensions then maybe the runs being leaked and catches going down would be reduced. These things happen in the cricket field and whichever team practices and does it best will be in the best position to win the tournament."
Stats inputs by Sampath Bandarupalli