IND-W vs AUS-W: "It Wasn't That Tough" - India's Smriti Mandhana On Wankhede Pitch For One-Off Test

India Women’s Cricket Team registered a historic win against Australia in the one-off Test played at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai. India opener Smriti Mandhana said that the Wankhede track was not very difficult to bat on.

Smriti Mandhana remained unbeaten in the second innings scoring a brisk 38 off 61 balls to guide India to an eight-wicket victory against Alyssa Healy’s side. This was the first-ever win by India Women’s team against Australia in Test cricket.

Sneh Rana and Pooja Vastrakar picked seven and five wickets respectively in the entire match to induce two batting failures for Australia getting them bundled for 219 and 261 respectively. India had a huge lead in the first innings when they scored 406 with the help of half-centuries from Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues, Richa Ghosh, and Deepti Sharma.

“It wasn’t that tough. Before the match, we thought it was going to be a rank-turner on days three and four. But if you applied yourself and showed patience, batting wasn’t that hard. Credit to all the batters. I told Shafali to bat as we batted in the first innings. Just react to the ball, that was the only message we had. She was unfortunate, but she started beautifully with that cover drive,” Mandhana said.

Jemimah Rodrigues expressed her elation after consecutive wins by the Indian team. In the Test match held just before Australia, India hammered England by 347 runs. Rodrigues considered the win as the best possible gift for Christmas and said that she is happy to be consistent with her process.

“Always wanted to play Test cricket. Nothing like winning two Tests back-to-back. Christmas has come early. I had set a few goals, one of which was to be consistent. I keep working hard, don’t think too much about results, I had to be consistent with my process,” Jemimah said after the match.

India Women’s Team Win Their First-Ever Test Match Against Australia

The Indian Women’s cricket team had never won a Test match against Australia before this win which makes it a significant achievement for Harmanpreet Kaur and Co. Australia won the toss and chose to bat first just to be bundled for 219. Pooja Vastrakar took a four-fer in the first innings and Sneh Rana took three wickets to induce a collapse for the Aussies.

India Women scored 406 runs in their first innings with Smriti Mandhana, Jemimah Rodrigues, Richa Ghosh, and Deepti Sharma all getting their respective half-centuries. Australia were then bundled for 261 as Sneh Rana took a four-fer in the second innings taking her wicket tally of the match to seven wickets. India got an easy target of 74 runs in the final innings which was convincingly achieved by them with eight wickets to spare.

Now the Women In Blue will face Australia in the white-ball leg which will include three ODIs and three T20Is with the ODI series starting from the 28th of December. The Indian Team squad for the ODIs and T20Is has not been announced yet. India Women will be looking to win the ODI and the T20I series to incur a full tour win against Australia.