On a day when India captain Harmanpreet Kaur was retained by her franchise Mumbai Indians ahead of the 2025 edition of Women's Premier League, the social media accounts of Australia's flagship Women's Big Bash League (WBBL) chose to revisit a controversial yet funny incident involving Harmanpreet and her New Zealand counterpart Sophie Devine. (More Cricket News)
The 2024 season of WBBL is currently underway, but the league's social handles shared the video of the Harmanpreet-Devine incident, which happened during a 2023 WBBL match between Melbourne Renegades and Perth Scorchers. Despite it being more than a year since it unfolded, the video soon went viral.
It all happened in the fifth ball of the 15th over, with Melbourne at 120-3 and Harmanpreet on strike, getting ready to face Devine. The Kiwi all-rounder delivered the ball before the Indian batter was ready, and the latter decided to pull out.
But Devine stuck to her ground, telling the umpire that the over should be called and got into a debate with Harmanpreet, who wanted it to be deemed a dead ball. The umpires had to intervene and have a chat amongst themselves, before going for a review.
The went upstairs to ascertain whether it was a dead ball and if Harmanpreet was ready to face the ball, which is when Devine asked, “What are we reviewing?”
Meanwhile, Perth wicketkeeper Beth Mooney, who was miked up, saw the lighter side of things and joked that she wouldn't know who would win a battle between Harmanpreet and Devine, adding that the Indian skipper does "scare" her a bit.
"There's a bit of argy-bargy going on between Harmanpreet (Kaur) and Soph (Devine), and I'm actually not sure who would win that battle because Harmanpreet scares me a little bit," said Mooney.
"I think Soph’s just getting annoyed that she’s taking forever and she taps about 10 times before she looks up. To be fair, the umpire wasn’t going to look at that till she got up, so I’m on Soph’s side. But don’t tell Harmanpreet that,” the Aussie keeper-batter added.
The third umpire eventually called it a dead ball, ruling that the striker was not ready for the ball and in no position to attempt to play it. The rebowled delivery was a dot, causing Mooney to remark, "All that for a dot". You can watch the video of the intriguing incident below.
Harmanpreet ended up scoring an unbeaten 49-ball 52 as her side finished on 171-6. But Scorchers captain Devine had the last laugh, as she smashed a 31-ball 53 to guide her team to a six-wicket victory in the match. Devine was also named the Player of the Match for her blitzkrieg.
With the Renegades playing the Scorchers again in the 2024 season on November 7, the WBBL accounts considered the opportunity ripe to remind viewers of what happened, the last time the two teams met.
