Rain was in the air all over England on June 18 and County Ground Bristol wasn’t secured from it either. But in the time that play did happen, England Women were mostly on top of it. They rolled India Women over quickly to enforce a follow on.
For India, Harmanpreet Kaur and Deepti Sharma started the proceedings right from their overnight score of 187-5. But on the very first ball of the day, Kaur was removed by Sophie Ecclestone. From there on, it became very difficult to arrest the innings as wicketkeeper batter Tania Bhatia and allrounder Sneh Rana followed suit.
Pace bowler Pooja Vastrakar did show some character and some abilities with the bat, stitching together a partnership of 33 runs with Deepti to take India close to avoiding the follow on. However new ball did the trick as experienced campaigners Katherine Brunt and Anya Shrubsole removed Vatsrakar and Jhulan Goswami within successive overs to get India all out for 231, which was 15 behind the 246 that they needed to score to avoid follow on.
Forced to follow on, India didn’t have a great start as Smriti Mandhana was removed for eight by Brunt. With India in a spot of bother, Deepti was promoted to number three. Backing that promotion she stood along with Shafali Verma as she kept scoring at a brisk pace.
Verma completed her second fifty in the game and became the only Indian Women player to hit two fifties on her Test debut. The last session of play was not possible as India ended their day at 83-1 with Verma batting at 55 and Deepti at 18.