If looks were deliveries, Saima Thakor would have had a wicket with her eighth ball. It was on the back of a length; Shafali Verma came down the track to try and smash it away but was too hasty and ended up pushing it straight back to the bowler. Thakor collected, mock threw at the stumps and gave Shafali a stare-down that said, "I've got it in for you."
And she did. Two balls later, Shafali tried to advance on Thakor again, the ball kept low and snuck past the bat to find offstump. Shafali looked up at Thakor in disappointment and was met with the same stare, only more triumphant. As Thakor gave Shafali a small send-off (and Shafali responded with some words of her own), the contest between these two teams, which on form and history is a no-contest in favour of Delhi Capitals, ignited.
It was Meg Lanning who tried to put it out. She took three boundaries off Thakor's next over to make it clear who was in charge of this game, and Capitals did not need to look back until Deepti Sharma forced them to.
It wasn't just that Lanning struck four after four; it was the ease with which she did it. The first was a tickle fine off a shorter ball, the second was a silken cover drive off a fuller delivery and the last was a vicious cut through backward point. The message to Thakor was clear: you can't bowl too short, too full or too wide, you can't miss your length or your lines, not even a tiny bit, or you will be punished.
Still, Capitals were behind after the powerplay - 35 for 1 compared to UP Warriorz's 44 for 1 - but Lanning was there. Gouher Sultana, Deepti and Rajeshwari Gayakwad all erred by going too short and Lanning dispatched them all. By the halfway stage, Capitals had caught up to where Warriorz were and had the advantage of wickets in hand. They were 63 for 1, with only Lanning's opening partner dismissed; Warriorz were 63 for 3 with all of Kiran Navgire, Alyssa Healy and Tahlia McGrath out.
Crucially they still had Deepti at the crease and the move to promote her to No.3 could prove a masterstroke. Deepti has only batted at No.3 four times before in her 160-match T20 career and only once in the last six years. With Vrinda Dinesh injured and Chamari Athapaththu out of the XI, she got the opportunity to play in that position today and showed she can pace an innings from that position. She took Warriorz to a competitive total with a second successive fifty and though it remains to be seen how they will manage her if they choose to bring Athapaththu back, they would have seen the value of having a player like her there. In this match, it brought the kind of stability Warriorz have envied a team like Capitals for having, and they even had glimpses of it today.
Thanks to Lanning the chase was set up and she seemed set to get them there and rack up some accolades along the way. When she raised her bat to fifty, Lanning became the first batter in WPL's short history to hit three successive half-centuries and two of them have come in winning causes.
In the last week, Lanning struck 55 off 41 when Capitals scored 163 for 8 and then 53 off 38 when they posted 192 for 4 against Mumbai Indians. Capitals defended both totals. Then, in the first time they've been asked to chase in Delhi, she finished with 60 off 46 on Friday. It's an impressive run which speaks to what she said earlier about the pleasures of being freed from the expectation of the international game. If runs were words, her performances are doing the talking. But they're not the only ones she has.
In the immediate aftermath of the game, Lanning admitted to the host broadcaster that she was "frustrated," that the innings that took her to the top of the batting charts did not come in a winning cause and took the responsibility of the defeat on her shoulders. "My wicket played a part in it," she said. "I was the set batter and I put pressure on the other batters coming in."
She may have been unnecessarily harsh on herself because players of the quality and International experience of Jemimah Rodrigues and Annabel Sutherland are also used to handling tense situations. In the end, it came down to who could hold their nerve and it was Thakor who did.
She was brought back to bowl the 18th over, took pace off to Rodrigues and denied her the ability to generate any power. Rodrigues hit the ball to Sophie Ecclestone at long-off and a team that has dropped 13 catches through the tournament so far, held their breath. Ecclestone held on.
That wicket opened Capitals up and even though it was Deepti's hat-trick and eventual four-for and Grace Harris' defence of nine runs off the last over that won the game, Harris herself paid tribute to the work Thakor did, in her opening spell and later on. "It was Saima, really - when she got up and about against Shafali," Harris said to the broadcasters when asked what she thought the difference between the two sides was. "She bowled exceptionally well today and kept the stumps in play. It was just us jumping on the back of that energy."