Players on DC team may have been affected by the occasion: head coach reflects on third WPL final defeat

Jonathan Batty, head coach of the Delhi Capitals, suggested that the pressure of the occasion may have affected the players after his team faced their third consecutive defeat in the Women's Premier League final.

Delhi Capitals should have chased down 150 against Mumbai Indians but fell short by eight runs on Saturday night. They had lost to RCB last season and Mumbai the year before.

"Everyone's hurting a huge amount at the moment. I think 99 percent of the time you back yourself to chase 150 on that wicket there. Big match finals, maybe the occasion just got to the players but full credit to Mumbai Indians for the way they defended that total.

"They made it really hard for us and we were never ahead in the chase. We were in the game all the way through, just couldn't get over the line," said Batty in the post-match media interaction.

The head coach insisted that the players did not carry baggage of the past going into another final.

"The girls have been really positive, I can't fault them. There has been no negative talk at all like 'Oh we've messed up the last two finals, we're going to take that baggage into this one', none of that. I thought they were really positive, really confident.

"I don't think there is a mental block at all. If you look at the way we performed with the ball, we did a great job to keep them to 149 on that wicket. We have seen what had happened in the elimination game and the other games here. We were expecting 180 to be a par score, so we were really happy with that," he said.

Batty added that the analysis of the loss can wait with players understandably upset.

"We're all hurting. It's going to take some time to think through what went wrong. and that's cricket as well. You've got two great quality teams going head-to-head and it was such a tight game. You lose by eight runs, which is two boundaries.

"We lost that by two balls in the end. It can go either way. I don't think there was a common denominator . There will be a winning side and a losing side. We've been on the losing side three times unfortunately," he added.

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.

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