Sciver-Brunt, an all-around player, leads the Mumbai Indians to their third win in a row

Nat Sciver-Brunt put on an exceptional all-round show to propel Mumbai Indians to the top of the table with an eight-wicket win over UP Warriorz in Bengaluru. She took three wickets and then scored an impressive unbeaten 75 off 44 balls to reach 143 with 18 balls left. Warriorz initially rode on Grace Harris' quickfire 45 and Vrinda Dinesh's solid 33 but lost eight wickets for 54 runs to eventually end with a below-par total. Sciver-Brunt and Hayley Matthews stitched together a solid 133-run stand for the second wicket and made the chase look easy. Even though Matthews got a life early on, she struggled her way to a 50-ball 59. However, Sciver-Brunt's boundary-laden shot helped MI win their third game in a row. Warriorz are fourth on the points table now with two wins after five games. With 254 runs from four matches, Sciver-Brunt is now the leading run-scorer of this WPL, overtaking Ellyse Perry's 235. A new Sciver-Brunt production When MI were 6 for 1 in the fourth over, Sciver-Brunt came in early, and Matthews struggled to get her timing and rhythm right. Chinelle Henry was swinging the ball both ways, making it difficult to score off her. But Sciver-Brunt took only five balls to change things around. She welcomed Saima Thakor with a hat-trick of fours in the sixth over - hitting to long-on, deep square-leg and deep cover - staying deep in the crease, and putting her bottom hand to good use and effortlessly manoeuvring the ball to both sides of the pitch. When there was width on offer, she cut fiercely, and when the length was short, she pulled behind and in front of square and toyed with the Warriorz bowlers. With nine fours, she scored fifty off 29 balls, bringing the total to 54 off 47 balls. This also included Henry scoring a hat trick of four fours in the 11th over. From there, it was a cakewalk for MI as Matthews also found her range and started hitting boundaries. During her 44-ball stay, Sciver-Brunt hit 13 fours in total. Harris moves up, Vrinda moves down After four matches, Warriorz took a cue from the WBBL and the Hundred and promoted Harris to open for the first time in WPL after her struggles in the middle order. The move felt just right as she looked in her element from the start. Harris and Vrinda shared 79 runs off 52 balls to give Warriorz strength after Kiran Navgire fell in the first over. On a pitch that was holding up, it was up to them to steady the innings. In the second over, Harris punished Shabnim Ismail for consecutive fours with a scoop against Sciver-Brunt. In the fourth, she continued to attack and smashed Matthews with 6, 4, 4, 6. She swept and pulled towards square leg, muscled the ball to long-on, and rolled her wrists to bisect the gap between mid-on and midwicket. On the other hand, Vrinda - who had scored only 40 in the previous four matches - looked in much better touch and played second fiddle to Harris well. She played a lofted cover drive elegantly to start the third over and followed it with a hook in the same over. Unlike Harris, Vrinda found boundaries on the off side with classy cover drives in her 30-ball 33. The first two partnerships gave Warriorz 81, the most for them in this WPL so far. It was something the Warriorz captain Deepti Sharma had admitted recently, that they needed to do better in the middle overs. But they couldn't, squandering a strong start by losing wickets in clumps, again, to lose the plot. From 81 for 1, they collapsed to 123 for 7, losing five of those wickets in the middle overs for 30 runs. It began when Amelia Kerr removed Harris in the tenth over after the batter was dropped on 44 by Ismail off Jintimani Kalita. Offspinner Sanskriti Gupta then bowled a momentum-changing 11th over when she dismissed both Vrinda and Tahlia McGrath in the space of four balls. Warriorz slowed down and did not quite recover after that. Overall, they have lost the most wickets (24) in the middle overs (7 to 16) in this WPL so far and have been the slowest (6.72) in that phase too.