India Women’s A team is currently in touring Australian to play against the Australia Women’s A team in all three formats. It is a great step for both the teams and great opportunity to test their fringe players. This shows the growing importance of the women’s cricket and the fact that itinerary includes an unofficial Test match demonstrates the positive intent from both boards towards Women’s Test matches.
There is an increase in Women’s Test matches in recent years after a period of 10-15 years when as a result of expansion of T20 cricket, all the boards stopped organizing Women’s Test match citing the cost factor and the popularity of T20 cricket as key reasons for their action.
India W vs Australia W: The arch-rivals
In women’s cricket, Test matches have been really few and far between. For example, Australia and India’s Women teams played just 11 Test matches over a period of 47 years with significant gaps between series. After the inaugural Test match in 1977 at Perth, the next series was played in India in 1984. Another 7-year gap was there when the teams met next in Australia in 1991. After that the frequency of Test matches reduced even further as the teams played their next Test match in 2006. The teams had to wait for another 15 years for their next Test match in 2021 but that was followed by the latest Test match between these two sides in 2023.
Australia Women currently have a 4-1 lead from these 11 Test matches, but India Women have won the last Test between these two sides played at Wankhede. The Indians also creditably managed to draw the previous Test match played in Australia.
2021 Test in Carrara Oval
In both these Test matches Indian batters delivered strong performances. In the 2021 Test match played in Carrara Oval, India batted first and posted 377/8, batting for more than two days as rain played spoilsport. Smriti Mandhana dominated the first day as she raced to an unbeaten 80 out of the team total of 132/1. She got her deserved century on day two before being dismissed by Ashleigh Gardner for 127. Deepti Sharma scored 66 and there were handy contributions from Punam Raut, Shafali Verma and captain Mithali Raj to take India to that total. Australian captain Meg Lanning utilized eight bowlers as Ellyse Perry, Stella Campbell and Sophie Molineux each picked up two wickets.
With significant overs lost due to rain, Australia declared on the last day with the score on 241/9. All-rounders Perry (68*) and Gardner (51) were the only batters to reach half-centuries as the Indian bowlers were on money with Pooja Vastrakar picking up 3 for 49.
India’s second innings was a relatively quick affaire as they again declared in the second innings with the score on 135/3 which included a fifty from Verma, setting Australia a target of 272. The Australians batted for nearly an hour reaching 36/2 before the Test match ended in a draw. Mandhana got the ‘Player-of-the-Match’ award for her classy hundred.
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2023 Test in Wankhede
India did even better in 2023 as the bowlers took the full advantage of the home condition. Batting first, Australia could score only 219 in their first innings as Tahlia McGrath top scored with 50. For India, it was Vastrakar again who led the way in bowling with 4 for 53 thanks to her swing bowling. Sneh Rana picked up three wickets. Indian batters responded strongly and posted an impressive score of 406. None of their batters could score a hundred but there were four fifty plus scores from Deepti Sharma (78), Mandhana (74), Jemimah Rodrigues (73) and debutant Richa Ghosh (52). Gardner picked up four wickets for the Australians conceding exactly 100 runs.
Australia batted better in their second innings but could post only 261. McGrath again top-scored for them with 73. However, Indian spinners Rana (4/63), Rajeshwari Gayakwad (2/42) and the captain Harmanpreet Kaur (2/23) shared eight wickets amongst them to restrict the target for India to just 75 runs.
Smriti Mandhana ensured that there was no hiccups for India as she remained unbeaten on 38 and hit the winning boundary to register India’s first over Test win against the Australians in the Women’s game.
It will be interesting to see how the India A team members perform and help in the growth of women’s cricket overall.
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