On the last ball of the 11th over, Meg Lanning went for a full-blooded sweep against Sneh Rana. It caught the top edge, went over the 'keeper's head before rolling towards the boundary. It was the same shot, in the few overs preceding that, that Harleen Deol had used with ample success against the spinners to pick up her scoring rate.

Just as scratchily, Lanning picked three more boundaries against Nandni Sharma in the next over to bring up her half-century and help the side accelerate to 112 for 2 in 12 overs. After having endured collapses through the middle overs in the first two games - 5 wickets in 25 balls (Overs 4.2 to 8.2) against Royal Challengers Bengaluru and 4 wickets in 51 balls (Overs 0.5 to 9.1) against Gujarat Giants - for the first time this season, UP Warriorz had set themselves up in a position where they were not catching up.

With the scoring rate on the rise, and momentum slipping away from Delhi Capitals, Jemimah Rodrigues threw the ball to Shafali Verma, the astute operator of right-arm somethingness.

There is ample in the collective craft of players from DC and UPW to be delighted by. Marizanne Kapp's swing bowling, Sophie Ecclestone's spin, Laura Wolvaardt's cover drive, Jemimah Rodrigues' sweeps, Chenille Henry's power - and more.

Among all those, Shafali Verma's bowling isn't one.

If not in delight of the art, but the effectiveness of the skill, she entered with a ball at a crucial phase.

By then, Lanning may have picked up her pace and notched up her fifty, but it wasn't one of her quintessential innings of domination. She didn't find gaps with the usual frequency, she didn't time the ball as well as she does when she is at her fluent best. Her cuts between short third and backward point didn't find the same precision and timing, even if some of those did pierce the gaps.

Against Shafali, she first attempted to go give the charge but was surprised by a seam-up delivery. Then, going late on a drive, she mistimed it to cover point. The next one, a more intentional drive, again finds the extra cover fielder.

A block of one over against Shafali was easy to shrug off and move on, but that's exactly where UPW's slide began. While Harleen continued to dominate Shree Charani - going over mid on to a full delivery, and then staying back and cutting one through backward point for a four - they were again kept on a leash by Shafali again, in her second over, where she mixed up her pace clever to deliver four dots.

With runs drying up from one end, Lanning was forced to go big against Nandni. A heave to a cross-seamer ended in the hands of the deep square leg fielder. The pressure that Shafali's part-time spin had induced in the UPW's batting had started to show up.

She returned again, for her third over. Fired some deliveries at the batters and looped some of them, caught them off-balance with their strides, and punched out another frugal over, conceding only three.

To her credit, Shafali can bowl the offbreak and the legbreak. The lazy run-in towards the bowling crease and rolling of the arms notwithstanding, there is a sense of unpredictability in the way the ball comes out of her hand. Those variations are yet to be defined, but Shafali operated smartly with her lines, taking advantage of her late release. Very specific with where she wanted her fielders placed, she crammed the batters for room, sticking largely to a stump-to-stump line, and was alert to any early trigger movements by the batters. For as limited as her skills are, the frequent changes in pace, angles and the trajectory, found the batters mistiming their slog sweeps and swipes. She didn't rely as much on the turn even on a surface which was assisting it.

By then, she had done enough to suck the momentum out of UPW's innings, prompting head coach Abhishek Nayar to retire out Harleen, who had scored a 36-ball 47, much like Giants had done on Tuesday evening hoping their death over specialists could assert themselves in the situation they were prepared for. The move, on Wednesday, backfired. Chloe Tryon was dismissed off the third ball, holing out to the fielder at deep mid wicket.

Shafali's spell almost took away the attention from how well Kapp had bowled that evening. And just to re-affirm that the first three overs weren't a fluke, she delivered a fourth - the final of the innings - and ended up with figures of 2 for 16, which included 14 dots.

While Shafali's spell did come as a surprise, and for a contest that went down to the last ball, turned out to be game changing eventually, DC skipper Jemimah Rodrigues admitted she wasn't fully taken aback.

"I don't think she was my last option because of the way she bowled in the last game," Rodrigues said. "I've also seen her, she's very confident with her bowling. Anytime you wake her up from sleep, she'll be like, I'll go and bowl for you. To have that much confidence, gives the captain a lot more trust on their bowler. She was phenomenal."

Shafali too spoke of that self-confidence she has in her bowling. "I have a lot of confidence in my bowling," she claimed. "Even from my domestic days, I was confident of my bowling. When you take important wickets in a World Cup final, everyone has confidence in you. I was trying to make them play dots and just give singles.I was trying to bowl stump-to-stump and cut out the boundaries. I'm a hard-hitter so I know where to bowl. If you bowl too full, you will get smashed. When I bowl, I envision that I'm batting and the plan is not to get hit for six."

It was a rare day when Shafali, the batter, couldn't club the big shots despite staying at the crease for more than 11 overs. The pitch was holding up a bit, and turning. Multiple attempts to hit big resulted in just singles and dots. Meg Lanning even kept the field open on the leg side with only four fielders for Shafali to take the bait and hit against the turn of S Asha. She controlled that temptation, and ended up with no sixes in her 32 ball stay. But in a bid to innovate, got dismissed unconventionally playing a reverse sweep.

Unlike her spell, the value of her inning - while significant - would be hard to comprehend in the context of the match.

It was a rare occurrence for Shafali to make an impact with the ball. But it was even rarer for Shafali to take the headlines without her bat doing the big talking. Wednesday was that reminder of cricket - that it's not always the polished skill that shines, and delights. Sometimes, it's the magic of somethingness.