Tuesday’s Women’s Premier League (WPL) game between the Mumbai Indians and the Gujarat Giants was special in its own ways. While that match will always be remembered for Mumbai India’s record chase in the history of the championship, Ayushi Soni became the first player to retire out since the inception of the league.
Soni who made her WPL debut for the Giants came in to replace an injured Anushka Sharma. She came in to bat at number 6 Kanika Ahuja was sent back by Hayley Matthews. The debutant found it tough to adjust to the WPL matchday setting and couldn’t fire from the get go. She was 11 off 14 when her franchise decided to retire her out at the end of the sixteenth over.
It was only the second such instance in Women’s franchise T20 league. Kathryn Bryce was retired out for the Manchester Originals during the Women’s Hundred game against the Northern Superchargers in 2024.
The Giants were at 136/5 when Ayushi walked out with four overs to play. They went on to score 56 runs in the last four with a run rate of 14 and put together a total of 192/5 at the end of 20 overs. Bharti Fulmali who replaced Ayushi Soni scored 36 off 15 balls with a strike rate of 240 and played a major role in guiding her side to fighting total.
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Gujarat Giants’ head coach Michael Klinger spoke about the reason behind taking Ayushi out and said, “So we spoke to Ayushi and Georgia about that [in the] 13-over timeout, and spoke to Ayushi about really lifting her rate once we get to the 15th over, because of what we have left in the shed, knowing that Bharti is a really strong hitter, and probably just felt after that 16th over, that was the time to inject Bharti with four overs to go, and we knew we had some batters left,”
He also added, “In the end, the decision came. I was just chatting with our batting coach and then Ashleigh Gardner came over and we discussed it and I made the call. In hindsight, it got us probably 20 more runs, so there’s no doubt the call was the right one,”
“It’s tough on the individual, we’ve spoken to Ayushi and we continue to speak to her, keep the confidence in her, but sometimes you’ve got to make those calls, there’s probably a difference between us making 190-odd to 170-odd.” said the Australian head coach.
He also praised Soni and said “I spoke to Ayushi as soon as she came off, and just said that we felt that Bharti was the best option going into the last four overs. Thought she did a good job in her first game, going I think at about a-run-a-ball to help build that phase with Georgia, and giving her some strike and she got some boundaries there, so she did a good job,”
