The Women’s Premier League (WPL) 2026 season opener between Mumbai Indians women & Royal Challengers Bengaluru women was a game Nadine de Klerk absolutely dominated – & it came as no surprise to anyone, given how well she tore it up. Note that the match saw Mumbai going first with the bat.
Mumbai’s players were left utterly bewildered by the RCB bowling, but de Klerk was the standout. In the four overs she bowled, she gave up a fairly decent 26 runs, but took a whopping 4 wickets in the process too. To top that off, she also had a pretty decent game with the bat, carrying her bat to a unbeaten score of 63* runs – which saw RCB home to a real nailbiter.
Putting in a seriously impressive display, de Klerk made herself the second player ever in WPL history to both score 50+ runs and take four+ wickets in a single game – and that’s quite a feat. Notably though, she was the second woman to do it after India all-rounder Deepti Sharma.
Nadine de Klerk had a chat with us after the game
You’d expect Nadine de Klerk to be made player of the match for her incredible performance against Mumbai – and that’s exactly what happened. After the match, she stepped up and talked about her showing there. A little interesting note was that she clocked up 18 runs in the final over – a pretty thrilling way to wrap up the chase.
‘(On whether the win has sunk in yet) Honestly, It’s probably going to take me a couple of days to really feel it. When it’s your day, you just have to be smart & make the most of it” – Glad to have gotten the win. (On her bowling) About just trusting my skills and sticking to what I know gets the job done. & yeah Bell bowled some fantastic bowling. I just had to stick to my strengths – some times they will go my way, other times they won’t. At the beginning of my match I have to admit I was a little frustrated – but you know cricket is a funny game – you just have to keep hanging in there. On grounds like these, with batting wickets like that you just need to go out there & make the most of it. I was thinking of really taking a few runs towards the back end of my innings. We had some really key partnerships- Arundhati batted beautifully. A couple of big boundaries (from Prema) were also really huge for us,” De Klerk said in the post-match presser