Hayley Matthews is the current Orange Cap holder in the WPL 2023.
West Indies’ all-rounder Hayley Matthews was the star of the show for the Mumbai Indians (MI) in their Women's Premier League (WPL) 2023 contest against the Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB) on March 6.
Hayley played a stunning knock of 77* runs off 38 balls and picked up 3 wickets for just 28 runs to help the Mumbai Indians register a nine-wicket triumph over Royal Challengers Bangalore.
It was MI’s second consecutive win in the WPL 2023, having defeated the Gujarat Giants by 143 runs in their first match in the tournament. With the emphatic win, MI reached the top of the WPL 2023 points table with 4 points.
On the other hand, Matthews won the Player-of-the-Match award and also got the orange cap for being the highest run scorer so far in the tournament (124 runs).
After the match, Matthews opened up about her all-round performance, especially batting, as well as about her journey from being an MI fan to representing her and dad’s favourite franchise.
As reported by The Indian Express, Hayley Matthews stated, “Before the start of the game, we thought that the par score would be around 170-180. When we had RCB out for 155, we knew we were in with a big chance. The wicket was also pretty good to bat on. And once we had a batter batting deep, it was easy. Nat and I could do it today.”
She added, “From when I was pretty young, I followed and supported my dad’s favourite sports teams. He was an MI fan from the very first season and a huge Sachin Tendulkar fan. When I was bought in the auction, somebody brought back all my tweets from 2013 around ‘Come on MI’ or something like that. It was pretty funny to see that.”