Exactly a week ago, Delhi Capitals' campaign was teetering on the brink after a three-run loss to Gujarat Giants. Jemimah Rodrigues, their captain, was bowled attempting a scoop off Sophie Devine, leading to a middle-order collapse. She had to drag herself off the field.
Tuesday night's Eliminator against Giants revealed a different Rodrigues. She crackled with energy, she was up and about in the dugout, slapping her bat in delight as Shafa-Lee - the nickname earned by their fearless opening combination - kept finding the boundary in an exhilarating powerplay. She sprinted across the outfield to pat her young bowlers, Shree Charani and Nandani Sharma. There was an intensity to everything she did.
Not that it had been missing earlier, but it perhaps felt even more amplified because of the magnitude of what was at stake. She possessed a kind of magnetic charge that pulled everyone in. Which is perhaps why a target of 169, which did seem a tad intimidating at the halfway stage in a knockout, never quite felt that way once Capitals began their chase. Six overs in, the contest was all but decided.
Capitals were acutely aware of letting things slip by if they looked to take this deep. Three days earlier, in a must-win league game, they nearly tripped over while letting a chase drift longer than they should have. This time, there was no such indulgence.
From ball one, the message was unmistakable: finish it early, finish it on our terms. And for Shafa-Lee, this was precisely their terrain. Lizelle Lee switched on with the certainty of someone who had already made peace with risk, nonchalantly planting forward and lofting length balls on the up, hacking across the line to the spinners and carving deliveries through a packed off-side ring.
Shafali was bludgeoning the ball straighter, using her strong bottom hand, shovelling them and muscling it to the ropes. Even after the two were dismissed, there was hardly any respite for Giants. Rodrigues took centre stage, and killed them softly - guiding balls into the gaps, picking her spots, getting to the pitch and oozing class and confidence playing her trademark inside-out drives. This was full-blown intent on display without meaning to hit the ball hard.
Before you realised, she'd hit 41 off 23 balls. And this time, she didn't need to be dragged off when she miscued a lofted hit to mid-off with Capitals needing nine runs for victory. It came with the realisation that this was a job well done. Capitals were through to their fourth final, having taken the stairs, not the elevator. The assuredness felt hard-earned, having come after several hits and misses.
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The past few months have been a roller-coaster of a journey for Rodrigues.
The outpouring of emotion following her World Cup semi-final century against Australia sparked necessary conversations around mental health, and the triumph that followed allowed little time to process the enormity of the achievement.
For days, she moved from one felicitation to another before flying out for the WBBL. Soon after, she returned to be beside her close friend Smriti Mandhana during a deep personal moment.
Amid all this came the Capitals captaincy. Without the familiar presence of Meg Lanning to lean on, Rodrigues was thrust into the spotlight. As losses came her way, it brought pressure that inevitably accompanies leadership in franchise cricket. Which is why this Eliminator felt so significant, not just for the team but for Rodrigues too.
Twenty-four hours prior to taking the field, Rodrigues seemed an oasis of calm, slipping into a quiet cafe all by herself, a radical luxury in India, because someone's always waiting with a phone for a selfie. But here she was all by herself, soaking in the quiet calm of a place, before a knockout game, far away from her team-mates and the cameras.
And on Tuesday night, her knock that killed the game felt meditative - a sharp contrast to her bristling and energetic avatar. She carried the same stillness she had sought out the night before. She didn't leave it for someone else to finish the job that she couldn't a week earlier.
On Thursday night, she would look to close another mini-loop in her cricketing journey. It could yet mark the start of something special - the prospect of leading Capitals to their first-ever silverware. And history seems within reach.