England Women’s cricket team make solid start in one-off Test against India

Bristol, Jun 16 Indian Women got rid of Lauren Winfield-Hill (35) after toiling hard as England Women reached a solid 86 for one at lunch on the opening day of the one-off Test here on Wednesday.

Tammy Beaumont was batting on 44 while giving her company was skipper Heather Knight (4) at the break.

The Indian pace duo of veteran Jhulan Goswami and Shikha Pandey made a promising start, doing just enough to trouble the English batswoman on more than one occasion.

In the seventh over, Goswami induced an edge from Winfield-Hill as the batter went for an extravagant drive but Smriti Mandhana dropped the chance in the slip cordon despite getting both hands on the ball.

In the next over, Winfield got lucky again. Debutant Pooja Vastrakar induced a thick edge from the batter but the ball flew between second slip and gully to the boundary.

After a slow and cautious start, England picked up the pace. Winfield was the more positive of the two batters as she lofted Pandey over the mid-wicket to hit the first six of the innings and in the process brought up England’s fifty in the 17th over.

An over later, Winfield hit another maximum, this time over backward square leg off Vastrakar.

Vastrakar eventually had the last laugh as she had Winfield caught by wicketkeeper Taniya Bhatia, giving India the breakthrough.

As many as five players made Test debut for India, including Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Pooja Vastrakar, Sneh Rana and Taniya Bhatt, while for England Sophia Dunkley was the lone player to earn a Test cap.

Indian women team is playing its first Test match in seven years. It last played the traditional format of the game in November 2014 against South Africa in Mysuru. News source PTI

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