Nat Sciver Brunt put on an exceptional all-round show to propel Mumbai Indians to top of the table with an eight-wicket win over UP Warriorz in Bengaluru. She took three wickets and followed it up with an impressive and unbeaten 75 off 44 balls to chase down the target of 143 with 18 balls remaining.

Warriorz initially rode on the efforts of Grace Harris’  quickfire 45 and Vrinda Dinesh’s solid 33 but lost eight wickets for 54 runs to eventually end up with a below-par total.

Sciver-Brunt and Hayley Matthews stitched together a solid 133-run stand for the second wicket and made the chase look easy. Though Matthews struggled her way to a 50-ball 59 after getting a life early on, Sciver-Brunt’s boundary-laden knock made sure MI raced to their third win in four attempts. Warriorz are fourth on the points table now with two wins after five games.

With 252 runs from four matches, Sciver-Brunt is now the leading run scorer of this WPL,  overtaking Ellyse Perry’s 235.

She came in early when MI were 6 for 1 in the fourth over, with Matthews struggling to get her timing and rhythm back. Chinelle Henry was swinging the ball both ways, making it difficult to score off in the powerplay. But Sciver-Brunt took only five balls to prove that wrong.

She welcomed Saima Thakor with a hat-trick of fours in the sixth over by sending the ball to long-on, deep square leg and deep cover. She played deep in the crease, put her bottom hand to good use and effortlessly maneuvered the ball to both sides of the pitch.

When there was width on offer, she cut fiercely, and when the length was short, she pulled behind and in front of square and toyed with the Warriorz bowlers. She brought up her fifty off 29 balls with nine fours and brought the equation down to 54 off 47 balls. This included a hat-trick of fours off Henry as well, in the 11th over.

From there, it was cakewalk for MI as Matthews also found her feet and started hitting boundaries. Overall, Sciver-Brunt struck 13 fours in her 44-ball stay.

After four matches, Warriorz took a cue from the WBBL and the Hundred and promoted Harris to open for the first time in WPL after her struggles in the middle order. The move felt just right as she looked in her element from the start.

With Navgire falling in the first over, it was up to Harris and Vrinda to steady the innings on a pitch that was holding up a bit, and the duo shared 79 runs off 52 balls to give Warriorz a solid start.

Harris began with a scoop against Sciver-Brunt and punished Shabnim Ismail for three fours on the bounce in the second over. She kep attacking and smashed 6, 4, 4, 6 off Matthews in the fourth. She swept and pulled towards square leg, muscled the ball to long-on, and rolled her wrists to bisect the gap between mid-on and midwicket.

On the other hand, Vrinda – who had scored only 40 in the previous four matches – looked in much better touch and played second fiddle to Harris. She played a lofted cover drive elegantly to start the third over and followed it with a hook in the same over. Unlike Harris, Vrinda found boundaries on the off side with classy cover drives in her 30-ball 33.

The first two partnerships gave Warriorz 81, the most for them in this WPL so far.

It was something the Warriorz captain Deepti Sharma had admitted recently, that they needed to do better in the middle overs. But they couldn’t as Warriorz squandered a strong start by losing wickets in heaps, again, to lose the plot. From 81 for 1, they collapsed to 123 for 7, losing five of those wickets in the middle overs for 30 runs.

It began when Amelia Kerr removed Harris in the 10th over after the batter was dropped on 44 by Ismail off Jintimani Kalita in the previous over. Offspinner Sanskriti Gupta then bowled a momentum-changing 11th over when she dismissed both Vrinda and Tahlia McGrath in the space of four balls. Warriorz slowed down and did not quite recover after that over.

Overall, they have lost the most wickets (24) in the middle overs (7 to 16) in this WPL so far and have been the slowest too (6.72) in that phase. With no individual brilliance rescuing them this time, their streak of two losses was broken.

Brief scores:
Mumbai Indians Women 143 for 2 in 17 overs (Nat Sciver-Brunt 75*, Hayley Matthews 59; Sophie Ecclestone 1-29, Deepti Sharma 1-25) beat UP Warriorz Women 142 for 9 in 20 overs (Grace Harris 45, Dinesh Vrinda 33, Shweta Sehrawat 19, Uma Chetry 13; Nat Sciver-Brunt 3-18, Shabnim Ismail 2-33, Hayley Matthews 1-38, Amelia Kerr 1-24, Sanskriti Gupta 2-11) by eight wickets

[Cricinfo]