Mumbai: India Women’s first innings lasted 36 minutes on the third morning as they added 30 runs to their overnight score, getting all out for 406 for an overall lead of 187 runs over Australia Women in the four-day, one-off Test at the Wankhede Stadium Saturday.
With this India scored 400 runs against Australia in the Women’s Tests for the first time, surpassing their previous best of 377/8 declared that they raked up at the Carrara Stadium in Gold Coast in 2021. The Indian innings lasted 7.5 overs in all, falling short of their expectations.
Starting at the overnight score of 376/7, India’s hopes rested on Deepti Sharma and Pooja Vastrakar adding as many runs as possible so that they could extend their least past the psychological mark of 200 runs.
However, the Australians came out with a plan, their experienced pacers Kim Garth and Annabel Sutherland used the short-pitched deliveries to rattle the Indian batters.
Vastrakar struck back-to-back boundaries off Sutherland in the 123rd over, getting on top of the bounce and pulling it to the deep backward square fence. The second one was a lucky boundary, top-edging a leg-cutter over the keeper’s head.
Her vigil ended on the last ball of the over. Short ball ploy works as Sutherland bangs around off-stump and Vastrakar pulls it straight to Garth at square-leg, simple catch to end her 126-ball knock for 47, studded with seven boundaries. India lose their eighth wicket with 396 runs on the board.
She and Deepti Sharma added 122 runs for the eight-wicket partnership off 263 deliveries. This is the second-highest partnership ever for the eighth wicket, surpassing the 114 scored by Kathryn Leng and Melissa Reynard of England against New Zealand Women at Scarborough in 1996. The highest eighth-wicket partnership is the 181 added by DL Wilson and SJ Griffiths of Australia scored against New Zealand in Auckland in January 1990.
Deepti Sharma and Renuka Thakur took the score past 400 with the latter top-edging a short ball to the fence for a boundary. Deepti added only eight runs to her overnight score before she was cleaned up by Kim Garth with a fuller-length delivery on off and middle-stumps with the batter playing across the line, the ball deflects off the pad and sneaks through the gap with the bat to crash into the stumps.
Deepti was out for 78 off 171 balls and included seven boundaries as the left-handed batter top-scored for India in this innings.
Renuka Singh Thakur struck another four, off another top-edge but was out a ball later as Sutherland banged it short again as Thakur splices it while taking evasive action and Ashleigh Gardner took a simple catch.
Kim Garth claimed 1-9 off four overs on Saturday morning while Sutherland bagged 2-21 of 3.3 overs as the Indian innings lasted just 36 minutes.
Brief scores:
Australia Women 219 trail India Women 406 all out in 126.3 overs (Deepti Sharma 78, Smriti Mandhana 74, Jemimah Rodrigues 73; Richa Ghosh 52, Pooja Vastrakar 47, Shafali Verma 40; Ashleigh Gardner 4-100, Annabel Sutherland 2-41, Kim Garth 2-58) by 187 runs.
