India women’s team secured an unbelievable draw in the one-off Test against England women at Bristol, after batting out the entire fourth day’s play after being asked to follow on.
England women had posted 396/9d with Heather Knight making 95, Tammy Beaumont making 66 and debutant Sophia Dunkley making 74*. For India, debutant Sneh Rana picked 4/131, while fellow debutant Deepti Sharma picked 3/65.
In reply, India openers Smriti Mandhana (78) and Shafali Verma (96) added 167 runs for the first wicket with Shafali impressing one and all with her stroke play and fine-tuned batting for the longer format of cricket.
However, then India unraveled and was bowled out for 231 runs with Sophie Ecclestone picking 4/88. England women captain Heather Knight asked India to follow on and things looked good as Mandhana fell for 8 runs, Mithali Raj followed her 1st innings score of 2 with 4 runs, and Harmanpreet Kaur, who made 4 in the first do fell for 8 runs in second innings.
However, Shafali had a dream debut as she followed up her 96 with an excellent 63 in 83 balls. Deepti Sharma made 54 in 168 balls, while Punam Raut held the fort for 104 balls making 34 runs. But with wickets falling in the middle order as Ecclestone picked 4/118, Sneh Rana, Shikha Pandey, and Taniya Bhatia came together to salvage an epic draw for India.
First Rana added 41 runs with Pandey and then 104* runs with Bhatia. Capping off her four wickets in England innings, Sneh Rana made 80* in 154 balls, while Taniya Bhatia made 44* in 88 balls. Shikha Pandey wasted 50 balls for her 18 runs, as the England camp got frustrated and anxious as India build up a healthy lead.
At the end, when hands shook and the match was declared a draw, India had made 344/8 in 121 overs. Shafali Verma was named the Player of the Match.
The Cricket fraternity on Twitter was ecstatic at the rearguard action showed by India batswomen and brilliant performance by Shafali Verma. In all, they were proud of the fight shown by the Indian women’s team in this one-off Test and lauded them on Twitter.
Here are the tweets:
