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Harleen Deol was batting at a decent clip when UP Warriorz (UPW) were 141 for 4 after 17 overs against Delhi Capitals. She was on 47 off 36 – a strike rate of 130.55 – with the help of seven fours. She was the set batter in the middle alongside the inexperienced and uncapped Shweta Sehrawat, who was on 7 off 6. So when UPW decided to retire Deol out, it raised some eyebrows and followed a brief disagreement in their dugout.
UPW took the call because Deol had slowed down considerably. She was striking at over 150 when she was on 28 off 18 and then 39 off 26, but as the death overs approached she was unable to deliver the big hits, scoring only eight runs off her last ten balls between the 15th and 17th overs. That was when UPW decided to call her back. Deol’s look of disbelief on being asked to retire out reflected how unexpected the decision was for the experienced India batter, after head coach Abhishek Nayar stepped out of the dugout and signalled for her return in the hope that the incoming batters would be able to find the boundaries in the final three overs.
“He (Nayar) turns to me and he goes, ‘I think it’s the time we need to potentially bring Harleen off.’ And I was like, ‘Ooh, okay, this isn’t a normal thing in the women’s game,'” UPW mentor Lisa Sthalekar said of how things unfolded in the dugout once Deol started slowing down. “And then I think another over came and she just wasn’t able to get that swing, that power that we needed to clear the boundaries. So then it was decided (to retire her out). And then he (Nayar) spoke, I think, to Meg (Lanning, the captain) and a couple of the coaches just quickly to make sure we were all on the same page. And then we pulled the trigger.”
The batters to follow Deol were Chloe Tryon, Sophie Ecclestone and Deepti Sharma, each of whom has a higher strike rate and has hit more boundaries in T20Is than Deol, who has just one six to her name in the format after facing 338 balls. Ecclestone and Deepti also hit sixes more frequently than Deol in the WPL. While Deol has managed just four sixes in 540 balls (one every 135 balls) in the WPL, Ecclestone has eight sixes in 167 balls (one every 21 balls) and Deepti has ten sixes in 470 balls (one every 47 balls). Even though Tryon was making her WPL debut on Wednesday, she has hit 41 sixes in 1,042 balls (one every 25.4 balls) combined across the women’s Hundred, the WBBL and the Women’s CPL.
There was merit in the decision to bring in a more hard-hitting batter, but it came with an element of risk.
“The only thing I questioned was, I think, Meg got out, and I said, ‘If we pull her (Deol) the next over, then you’ve got two new batters (at the crease),'” Sthalekar said. “She’s kind of got used to the conditions. But I think we had about 40 (18) deliveries left. So it’s like, how are we going to maximise those deliveries? And we still felt with Chloe, with an Asha (Sobhana), with a Sophie, that we still had firepower. Like I said, sometimes these things work and we look like geniuses. And sometimes they don’t. And that’s why we love this game of cricket. It keeps us on our toes.”
Unfortunately for UPW, the move didn’t work. None of their batters from No. 6 and below could score more than five runs or last longer than five balls, and Deol’s tactical retirement triggered a collapse of 4 for 11. UPW finished on a below-par 154 for 8 after scoring only 13 runs in the last three overs and suffered their third successive loss of the tournament.
Deol was the second batter to retire out in two days in the WPL, after Gujarat Giants had done so with Ayush Soni against Mumbai Indians on Tuesday night. Retiring batters out in search of quick runs is quickly becoming a trend in 2026, with as many as eight batters having been retired out in T20 franchise cricket across the men’s and women’s leagues over the last two weeks.
“I think the game keeps evolving and if we keep getting stuck in the past, then someone’s going to catch us up,” Sthalekar said of the trend. “In terms of why people retire players out, it’s because they probably feel there’s more power still to come. And if you’re trying to capitalise on the last few overs, you want the balls to be cleared to the boundaries with ease. And that’s why a number of teams, over a recent period of time, have decided to retire a player out and bring in firepower. Sometimes it works – and we’ve seen that in the Big Bash [League] recently – and sometimes it doesn’t.”
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