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.
Three months later, at the behest of the International Cricket Council, the Board of Control for Cricket in India took over from the Women’s Cricket Association of India as the sport’s national governing body. Suddenly, India became a bit-part player in the world of multi-day international cricket. England have not played a Test in the subcontinent in 18 long years; Australia have waited nearly four decades (since 10 February 1984, to be precise).
Despite all this, the elusive experience of playing a Test in India retains its potency in the imagination of the female cricketer. “It’s one of those bucket-list things that you want to do” Heather Knight, England’s captain, said last week.
It can also be a potential minefield. Knight’s predecessor, Charlotte Edwards, did the captaincy honours last time England played a Test in India,, from 21-24 November 2005 in Delhi. It was her first tour in charge; she had to learn on the job, fast, after her mention of staying in hotels full of cockroaches in her ESPNCricinfo tour diary sparked outrage among the Indian press. It is difficult to imagine one of today’s consummate press conference professionals making a similar remark – but then, with the England and Wales Cricket Board still almost a decade away from introducing women’s central contracts, it was a different era back then.
“There were power cuts, there were times when there was no shower,” says Claire Taylor, another who went on that tour. “We played the Test at the university ground in Delhi and I don’t remember there being much more than the odd spectator. There was no fanfare whatsoever about it.” England spent their evenings during the Test sorting their washing, which had somehow got mixed up with the opposition’s kit in transit to the hotel.
“Anything can happen in India,” is the verdict of Laura MacLeod, director of cricket at Central Sparks, who opened the batting in the Test alongside Edwards. Her advice to Knight and co? “You have to embrace it, and not get too hung up on controlling things.”
It is a mantra born of personal experience: MacLeod made scores of six and 16 in the Test, although few of her teammates fared much better in four difficult, swelteringly hot days. Edwards – using her tried-and-tested method of always calling tails – had begun badly by losing the toss; India racked up 244 for five on day one. “We never felt that we were in the game,” says Taylor. “I dropped Mithali Raj early on the first day [Raj was on 17 and went on to score 78], and they just built and built. I disattached a ligament in my right thumb by dropping that catch, so I was out of sorts for the rest of the tour.”
England fought back on the second day, bowling India out for 289; but a familiar face – the only recently retired Jhulan Goswami – quickly reduced them to 61 for six. By the time day three dawned, England still needed 37 to avoid the follow-on. They also had to deal with another crushing blow: X-rays revealed that their young, fiery fast bowler had fractured a bone in her left hand and would need to fly home. Her name? Katherine Brunt.
England limped to 154 all out; while India’s declaration on the third evening left them with an unlikely target of 311 to chase down on the fourth day. “It was long before you would attack spinners – you would grind it down, grind it down,” says MacLeod. “There were a lot of people around the bat getting very excited and very giddy. I didn’t last very long.”
By the afternoon session, with England already four down, it was all about digging in: Jenny Gunn (32 off 172 balls), Rosalie Birch (20 not out off 96) and Laura Harper (21 not out off 96) duly obliged, and the match ended in a draw.
But England’s tour never quite recovered: the Test was quickly followed by five one-day internationals, of which they lost four. In the fourth, at Silchar, they were bowled out for 50 by the might of Goswami. To make matters worse, the humiliation took place in front of a 22,000-strong crowd, enjoying a specially granted public holiday to watch what turned out to be about 90 minutes’ worth of cricket.
By the fifth and final ODI, the England squad had been so overtaken by “Delhi Belly” that they could barely field 11 players. “It was up for grabs who would be 11th and who would be 12th,” says Taylor. “The day before the match, Shaggy [Caroline Atkins] and I left the pavilion at the same time to go on a warm-up with the rest of the girls and whoever had to return to the pavilion to use the toilet the soonest was 12th man. And that was Shaggy.”
“It wasn’t our best tour,” she concludes, ruefully.
Knight’s team will be hoping for a smoother experience – although the signs are not good. England’s A team, who played a three-match T20 series against India A last week, finished up so plagued by illness that Knight and the coach, Jon Lewis, had to impose a strict quarantine for anyone moving between the A camp and the main England squad (Charlie Dean missed the first T20i as a result). England triumphed 2-1 in the recent T20s, but after scuttling the visitors for 126 in the final match on Sunday, with four players falling to golden ducks, the India bowlers will probably have their tails up. Plus ça change ….
The England batters have to switch mindset and remember how to play multi-day, red-ball cricket – oddly enough, a format with which their 2005 counterparts were far more familiar than this crop will be. Progress in women’s cricket is not always linear. Still, the BCCI’s decision to host back-to-back Tests offers some reassurance we may be witnessing a revival of the longer format for women. Win, lose or draw, let’s hope it does not take another 18 years before an England side get the chance to tick playing a Test in India off their bucket list.
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