As the cliche goes, women’s Tests in India are like buses: you wait ages for one (in this case nine years), and then two come along at once. On Thursday, India commence their mammoth effort with a four-day encounter against England at the DY Patil Stadium in Mumbai. After a mere three-day break, they will then take on Australia at the Wankhede. Back-to-back Tests are common in the men’s game but in women’s cricket, where multi-day matches are rarely played, this is the sort of scheduling that makes you sweat just thinking about it.
And yet it’s also an opportunity. The last time two women’s Tests were played in the same calendar month was in August 2006. No one knew it at the time, but that two-Test series – between England and India – would subsequently gain historic status: it remains the last multi-Test series played in the women’s game.
