Gujarat Giants (GG) suffered multiple errors during their WPL 2025 Eliminator against Mumbai Indians (MI), leading to a 47-run defeat. Coach Michael Klinger noted that their mistakes cost them significantly. The team’s challenges began when star allrounder Deandra Dottin injured her knee during warm-ups, preventing her from playing. Mumbai capitalized on GG’s defensive lapses, with GG dropping four catches and making several misfields, ultimately conceding 213 runs. Despite winning the toss and opting to chase, GG struggled in their batting with several run-outs and poor decision-making. Klinger acknowledged that missing Dottin and their fielding errors proved costly.
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“I’m certainly not a medical expert, but I’ve had some [tendon injuries] before during my playing days, and it typically gets better as you warm up, so we attempted to give her another chance to see if she could [play], and she would have likely preferred to play as a batter only,” Giants coach Michael Klinger said after the game. “However, we would have been short a bowler, so bringing Danny Gibson in as a direct replacement was the obvious choice, and I thought Danny did a great job tonight.
“Deandra is a fantastic player and an impact player, so there’s no doubt that her last-minute absence affected us.”
“We may have slightly misread the conditions,” Klinger commented about their decision to bowl. “We thought the wicket had a bit of tackiness when we examined it before the toss, and we expected it might have offered some movement with the new ball in the first innings or even have held and spun a little. But that wasn’t the case; it played quite well.
“However, tosses in T20 cricket don’t win you games. In fact, it was soaking wet out there in the latter half of the match, making it likely much easier to bowl first than second. But when you’re defending a score over 200, it places enormous pressure on the batting group, which is probably how we lost a lot of our wickets tonight.”
Mumbai’s fielding was exemplary, highlighted by Matthews’ diving catch in the first over to dismiss Beth Mooney, and their teammates capitalized on every run-out opportunity that came their way, executing three successful run-outs.
“Yeah, our fielding wasn’t up to par tonight,” Klinger acknowledged. “That was evident for most observers. I thought Mumbai Indians’ fielding was outstanding. They probably felt unsatisfied with their fielding when they lost to RCB the other night as well; these things happen sometimes. We would have preferred to put in a better fielding performance because, as I mentioned, I believe there was about a 40-run swing there. It was probably minus 20 for us and plus 20 for them. And, you know, we lost by 47 runs. So sometimes those moments can significantly affect the game, but that’s okay; it happens.”
Following Mooney’s early dismissal, Harleen Deol was involved in a mix-up that led to her downfall. Soon after, Gibson was run out while attempting to take a second run, and Kashvee Gautam found herself in trouble by challenging Harmanpreet Kaur’s arm within the 30-yard circle.
“Yeah, several run-outs in a chase aren’t ideal,” Klinger reflected. “But we knew it was going to be a challenging task, and we needed to execute many aspects of that chase correctly, which just didn’t transpire.”
If only the toss had gone our way, or if Dottin had been fit to play, or if fielders had held their catches and completed their runs—who knows what the outcome might have been.