That’s it from us. We’ll have over-by-over coverage of the full women’s Test between Australia and India from the Western Australian Cricket Association ground for four days from March 6. Later, potaters.
It was a day almost all about Alyssa Healy. Yes, she will play in and captain in a Test match to end this series, but the bulk of her career, as it is for women’s international cricket, has been about the shorter formats. So her leaving the one-day arena feels, in a way, more important, like it’s the most central part.
Healy went out today with the kind of exit that will long be remembered. A big-game player in World Cup finals, yes, but to show up on your farewell day and perform, then go large, that’s something special. So often when she’s made hundreds, she has made them into huge hundreds. And so today, walking out through an Indian guard of honour to ransack 158 from 98 balls, batting until the 37th over while hitting 27 fours and two sixes, a classic Healy medley of those clean-out smites over the leg side, the flashes and back-away carves, the swivels, but really when she got off the mark with a crisp cut shot for four it suggested that this might be another of her days.
Most of her runs were made alongside Beth Mooney, who will at long last succeed Healy as keeper after a decade of waiting, and who made a century of her own today. Georgia Voll made another 50 as a member of the coming generation, and despite a late clatter of wickets in the death overs, Nicola Carey held it together to take 22 runs from the penultimate over and take Australia past 400.
India were never winning it from there, and were winning it even less when Mandhana fell early, Rawal and Rodrigues couldn’t turn a good start into something more, and then Harmanpreet and Deol sucked the air out of the innings. From that point India all but gave up, and what the purpose was of batting out so many overs with little interest in scoring, we may never know. Rana’s 44 from 74 balls and Deepti’s 29 from 47 were the epitome of futility.
Alana King bowled an excellent spell even before she had a bag of wickets, and 4 for 33 from 10 overs was fitting eventual reward. Wareham took 2 for 3. Perhaps Australia’s selectors should stop leaving out one or other of their leg-spinners.
