India Women vs Australia Women, Only Test - Live Cricket Score, Commentary

Series: Australia Women tour of India, 2023-24 Venue: Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai Date & Time: Dec 21-Dec 2409:30 AM LOCAL
AUSW 219 & 261
INDW 406 & 75/2
India Women won by 8 wkts
PLAYER OF THE MATCH
Sneh Rana

Kaur collects the trophy and joins her team-mates. Australian captain Healy is seen clicking a picture of the joyous Indian team. All smiles in the Indian camp. Richa Ghosh is now lifting the trophy above her head. Rodrigues, meanwhile, is taking a selfie with the fans. Incredible scenes. After humbling England by 347 runs in three days, they have now beaten the mighty Aussies. Two big wins in a fortnight for India. That's it from this encounter. The action will shift to white-ball cricket with the first ODI commencing on Thursday (December 28). Hope you enjoyed our coverage. Until next time, it's goodbye from all of us down here...

Harmanpreet Kaur: It's a reward for all the hard work we have done for so many years. Credit goes to all our support staff, especially our bowling coach and batting coach. We tried to keep things very simple. It's a reward for all the hard work and all the patience. We thought if we can play some positive cricket, it can really help us. We have been playing with this bunch for so many years and if we could do shuffle a bit here and there. We put Richa up, we know how she can bat, if she's there she can damage the game, that's the reason we put her there. We didn't want to go back to defensive cricket. We needed to stay in the moment. In the second innings, the partnerships helped them to put a decent total on the board. We showed trust on our bowling unit and our support staff asked me to bowl and I got those crucial wickets at that time. Everyone in the team contributed, everyone was there to win the game for the team. Our bowling coach is telling them about how to take wickets and not be defensive. That's really helping us. Firstly I want to thank BCCI for giving us this opportunity and secondly all our selectors - they have given us the best side and shown the trust on each and every member. When everything works together, you get positive results. Hopefully we'll get many more Test games in upcoming years. Thanks to the crowd. Everything went really well for us.

Sneh Rana | Player of the Match: It feels amazing, standing here receiving this award, fantastic win by our team. No one called me night-watchman because I can bat. First time batting with Smriti and we were enjoying each others' company. Catch drops are part of the match. Everyone wants to contribute. Even I can drop catches, so I don't feel bad. I try to come back harder. Test matches are taking place in India after a long time, Test match gives a different vibe. The team environment in the last 15 days and the support that we have been receiving, it's really amazing. Two home Tests and we have won both. I think it will attract a lot of youngsters.

Alyssa Healy: What an amazing experience to come here and play Test cricket. Not easy to win over here, we found that out. We'd love to play a couple more to make it really interesting. We probably had one bad day - the first day and rest of the time we showed a lot of fight. Proud of our effort. It's our first opportunity to play red-ball cricket over here. We are learning on our feet out here. The way that the girls continued to adapt throughout the four days, it was super impressive. Fair play to the Indian side, they did an amazing job continuing to put pressure on us in particular with the bat. Ultimately put too many runs on us. Winning the toss, batting and then getting bowled out on that first day and then probably leaking too many in the afternoon put us on the back foot a little bit. If we had nudged over 300, it would have probably been a different prospect. That's the beauty of the game, you got execute right through the four days and we weren't able to do that. We can take some confidence out of the conditions out here at Wankhede. We haven't played a lot of cricket here. The opportunity to play a practice game and then a four-day Test puts us in good stead leading into the white-ball. Still six games left in this series. The girls have really enjoyed the last four days.

Jemimah Rodrigues: Test cricket is something I always wanted to play. The first thing is to wear the India blue jersey. We used to not play a lot of Test cricket then. From there to where these whites was a dream, but nothing like winning two Tests back-to-back. Getting two back-to-back half-centuries too. Christmas has come early. Even before the domestic season could start, I had set a few goals and one of them was to be consistent. If I can score consistently, my team can go and win, whether it's for Mumbai or India. I keep working hard, don't think too much about results, I had to be consistent with my process. Once you are consistent there, results automatically follow. It's always nice walking in. It was around this time last year I walked in with no scores and didn't have a great series. This time, I had lot of scores backing me and I just went with the confidence. They have inspired me a lot now to bowl. On these wickets there's turn and bounce, I'm from Mumbai, wish I could have contributed a little more but I said I'll leave it for the bowlers.

Smriti Mandhana: It wasn't that tough. When we saw the wicket before the match, we thought it was going to be a rank-turner on day three and four. But if you applied yourself, showed patience and waited for loose balls, batting wasn't that hard. Credit to all the batters. In the first innings, the way Deepti and Pooja got us back in the game, I think that was the partnership for me that won us the game. (Gameplan for the second innings) I told Shafali that we'll just bat the way we batted in the first innings. Just watch the ball and play, nothing too fancy, nothing too defensive. Just react to the ball because we both bat the best when we just react to the ball. So that was the only message we had. She was unfortunate, but she started off beautifully with that cover drive.

Renuka Singh: (Message from Troy Cooley - India's bowling coach) He told me to stay patient. Test cricket tests your patience. (Celebrations) It's a secret, won't reveal it.

Pooja Vastrakar: Feeling very happy, history created as this is our first Test win against Australia. I focus a lot on my batting. My motivation was not to bowl yesterday. Deepti and I were talking that we need to bat the entire day.

12:45 Local Time, 07:15 GMT, 12:45 IST: Incredible performance from hosts and India register their first-ever Test win against Australia! After losing the toss, they bundled out Australia for 219 on the opening day of the Test. Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana at the top, Richa Ghosh and Jemimah Rodrigues in the middle order, Deepti Sharma and Pooja Vastrakar - they all made significant contributions as India took a 187-run lead. Australia, in the form of Tahlia McGrath, fought back on day three as the Australian No. 4 recorded her second fifty of the match. Harmanpreet Kaur picked a couple of key wickets in the final session of the penultimate day. And then the Indian bowlers picked the last five wickets for just 28 runs in the morning session today. Chasing 75, Shafali Verma perished in the very first over after scoring a boundary. There weren't many hiccups after that. Richa Ghosh wasn't comfortable at the crease, she played a missed a lot, was dropped on 0 and scored a couple of streaky boundaries. She eventually perished while attempting to play a big shot but not before stitching a half-ton partnership with Mandhana. The stylish left-handed opener batted fluently and fittingly hit the winning runs.

18.4

Jonassen to Mandhana, FOUR, Mandhana finishes off in style! Shimmies down the track, gets close to the pitch of this flighted ball and lofts it over the bowler's head. Hits the rope on the half-volley. India win by 8 wickets and script history!

18.3

Jonassen to Mandhana, no run, leg-lined, nudged into the leg-side

18.2

Jonassen to Rodrigues, 1 run, 72.7kph, trifle short, nudged towards mid-wicket for a single

18.1

Jonassen to Rodrigues, no run, 76.3kph, rocks back to punch and inside-halves it towards mid-off

17.6

Gardner to Rodrigues, 1 run, full in length and Rodrigues sweeps along the ground to deep backward square leg

17.5

Gardner to Rodrigues, no run, 75kph, blocked back to the bowler

17.4

Gardner to Rodrigues, no run, 81.9kph, in-turner, a shuffling Rodrigues defends into the leg-side

17.3

Gardner to Rodrigues, FOUR, sounds good and it's four! Tossed up, full in length, Rodrigues gets low, fetches it from outside off and sweeps it fiercely over mid-wicket

17.2

Gardner to Rodrigues, no run, 74.7kph, flighted outside off, Rodrigues looks to block off the front foot and is struck on the pad. Impact outside off

17.1

Gardner to Rodrigues, no run, 77.7kph, trifle short, Rodrigues blocks it out

16.6

Jonassen to Mandhana, no run, 78.5kph, full and on the stumps, Mandhana plays it back to the bowler

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