India are set to play two women’s Tests in 2021. After two days of the Test against England at Bristol, Episode 2 of the Holding the Line minicast wonders how red-ball skills evolve when there are so few red-ball matches played. And a throwback to 2006, when another India batter missed out on a century.
Some notes and corrections to this audio:
There were six debutants in the Bristol Test, not five.
And the 2006 win was the first series win in a series of more than one Test.
Transcript
Of course, getting out in the 90s is always a regret. But looking at it another way, this innings will give me confidence for future matches.
Shafali Verma
Shafali Verma is 17. And she’s just made 96 very entertaining runs in her first time playing Test cricket for India.
As I record this, I’ve watched two days of India’s Test match against England in Bristol. I’m still catching my breath after some roller coaster action.
As she just told us, Shafali isn’t dwelling on her missed hundred. But it got me thinking. Back to a time when Shafali was just two years old. When another Indian legend got out in her 90s in a Test match in England. 98 to be exact, in what would be her last Test appearance for India.
And one of Shafali’s teammates from Bristol? She was there back then too. A younger bowler, but just as hungry, taking 10 wickets to set a record and help India make history.
I’m Karunya Keshav. And thanks for joining me on the Holding the Line minicast.
The Indian women’s cricket team play two Test matches in 2021. Over five episodes of this minicast, I’ll tackle five questions to help understand where women’s Test cricket is at. I’ll tell you stories from Indian cricket’s past, and talk about just what these Tests means for the future.
In episode 2 I’m thinking about this: How do red-ball skills evolve when women play so little Test cricket?
But first, we go back 15 years.
It’s 2006. Indian women’s cricket is in the process of being taken over by the BCCI. The Women’s Cricket Association of India used to run it before. There’s anticipation for the team’s tour of England. They are wearing the BCCI crest for the first time and they’re looking good.
The final Test is at Taunton. India have had a mixed tour so far. They won their first ever T20I, playing a format they had no clue about, and playing under lights for the first time. They drew the first Test. But then they were swept in the one-dayers. Now here they are for the final match of their tour.
Sudha Shah, the coach, has insisted on a song-and-dance show as part of their preparation. A bit of fun to get them out of their funk.
It evidently works. Because two people in the team are especially on song in the Test, Anjum Chopra and Jhulan Goswami.
You may know Anjum as the voice you hear on commentary during the IPL. When you go to the Delhi stadium, you may walk through the Anjum Chopra gates. She has that rare honour.
Jhulan is the legend, who at 38, is still taking wickets and still showing 17-year-old Shafalis how it’s done.
In that Taunton Test, Anjum is in the zone. Middling the ball well, she finds the gaps, runs hard, and takes India to 307. She deserves that first Test 100, but at 98, she is declared lbw to Isa Guha.
Jhulan still feels it was not the right decision. Because Anjum had stretched forward a fair bit. But they have no video, so who knows.
Then, it is Jhulan’s turn. India’s pace bowler is struggling with niggles on her hamstring and glutes. But something is special about that day. One of those days that bowlers dream about, where the ball just follows their mind and does everything they want of it. For Jhulan, it moves, it bounces, it hits the right areas, and England are bowled out for 99. Jhulan has five wickets, and another five wickets when England follow on.
Jhulan was 23 then. She’s now 38. Her opening spell in Bristol was a treat.
When I see a Jimmy Anderson at 38, having got cannier with every passing season, I wonder what kind of bowler Jhulan might have been, if she’d had half as many opportunities.
And that’s where my question comes in. Without playing enough Tests, how do these players become the best red-ball players they have it in them to be?
You’ve probably come across Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours of practice rule.
Where are these women going to get their 10,000 hours? They play Tests once or twice in 7 years, they don’t have first-class cricket, they don’t have the equivalent of a Ranji trophy or county cricket. So how do they get better?
Right now, a lot of the skills development in the longer format happens in real time.
I’d asked England’s Kate Cross about this.
There is always pressure when we play Test cricket because we don’t know much about it. We actually do a lot of our learning in four-day cricket while we play it. If we played a little bit more of it, whether that’s domestic level or whether we played more international Test cricket, then it would naturally be a better game because we’re more used to the format, how it works, and those ebbs and flows are spread over a longer period whereas we’re used to the white ball game where it happens a lot quicker.
Kate Cross
Kate’s right. However much you prepare, the twists and turns and demands of Test cricket catch you by surprise.
This is true for every aspect of the game. Take the fielding for example. In Bristol, India seemed to be working out their best slip cordon and their bowling plans as the day went along.
Or even captaincy. Mithali Raj hasn’t had to plan Test tactics in seven years. She hasn’t had the experience, and she doesn’t have access to format-specific analytics either.
So how do red-ball skills evolve when women play so little Test cricket? The sad answer right now is that for people like Jhulan, they cannot. At least not in the way they have for Anderson or Ishant Sharma.
But at the same time, we now also know that that 10,000 hour rule is not as simple as that. And maybe we need to change our expectation of what it means to be good at women’s cricket.
Because the women’s red-ball game as a whole is evolving in front of our eyes.
In the Bristol Test, two women hit two sixes each. That’s never happened before. The Test, so far, has the highest run-rate of any women’s Test ever.
Six players made their debut and all of them were brilliant. Shafali, who’s never played a formal red-ball match before, and never even played first-class cricket, almost got a 100. England’s Sophia Dunkley, another of those Six debutants, has possibly put her team in a winning position.
And they are all using those hours they’ve put in in other formats to move women’s Test cricket into a new future.
That match in 2006? India won that, and won the series, their first ever multi-format series win. It wasn’t easy. Chasing 98 in the fourth innings, they collapsed and lost five wickets. Reema Malhotra, another excellent voice behind the mike now, remembers walking in nervously to a lot of chatter, a lot of sledging. The buzz, she said, was like walking into a swarm of bees! Mithali told her to just laugh at it all and shut it out.
This one is just the third Test India have played since that day. But they’ve come such a long way since then.
Thanks for listening. In the next episode, another story and another element of Test cricket.