Capsey — a Capital investment for Delhi

Up, up and up… Alice Capsey has proved with excellent performances that Delhi Capitals had made no mistake in betting on her.
| Photo Credit: EMMANUAL YOGINI

On the day of the Women’s Premier League auction in Mumbai, Alice Capsey, like a few others, had a T20 World Cup match to play in South Africa. She was bought by Delhi Capitals for ₹75 lakh, against her base price of ₹30 lakh. She celebrated it by smashing a 22-ball 51 to power England to a six-wicket win against Ireland. The Capitals management must have been pleased with that effort.

Capsey has made them happier since the WPL got underway. On Monday night, her 38 off 24 balls helped Capitals overcome the loss of in-form openers Meg Lanning and Shafali Verma and put the chase against Royal Challengers Bangalore on the right track.

The significance of her innings became clearer after the match: Capitals’ fourth victory in five matches came with only two balls to spare. In her first match, also against RCB, she had taken the wickets of Smriti Mandhana and Sophie Devine with her off-spin.

And she is just 18. She certainly looks one for the future!

She said she enjoyed her knock against RCB at the D.Y. Patil Stadium. “It was good fun,” she said. “It was nice to have hit some boundaries in the PowerPlay.”

Capsey thinks the WPL is shaping up nicely. “It has been a brilliant tournament,” she said. “We have seen 200-plus scores in every other game and you have these kinds of games (on Monday) going down to the wire.”

She feels Captials is a balanced side. “Meg and Shafali are among the leading scorers in the tournament and we have got Marizanne Kapp and Tara Norris who have taken five-wicket hauls,” she said. “And we are one of the best fielding sides in the competition.”

She may still be in her teens, but she has already made a mark in professional leagues, back home in The Hundred, in which her side Oval Invincibles was the champion in both the editions, and the WBBL in Australia.