The women’s Test match between India and England in Bristol will be held on a used wicket which earlier played host to a T20 Blast match on 11 June, Friday. Reports have emerged out of the English media that a request for a fresh pitch was denied after the women's team had asked to play on a fresh pitch after learning that a T20 match between Gloucestershire and Sussex was played on that wicket.
India women’s team will be playing a Test match after almost seven years while the English team is playing their first home Test in almost two years. India last featured in a longer format game was back in 2014/15 when they hosted South Africa in Mysore and defeated them by an innings and 34 runs.
India and England last played each in a Test match back in 2014 in Wormsley where the visiting team emerged victorious by 6 wickets.
Smriti Mandhana, Punam Raut, Mithali Raj, Harmanpreet Kaur, Jhulan Goswami, Shikha Pandey and Ekta Bisht are some of the players who were a part of that squad who played the last Test against the English team and have been selected to face England in this historic match as well.
The selectors recently named the Indian squad for the UK tour. Shafali Verma and Jemimah Rodrigues who have made a good name for themselves in the limited-overs formats have been selected in the Test squad for the first time.
Harmanpreet Kaur had earlier said that the team got an opportunity to interact with India men’s Test team vice-captain Ajinkya Rahane on how he approaches the Test format.
"I have not played much red-ball cricket, I have played just two Tests. This time we got a chance to speak to Ajinkya Rahane, we picked his brain on how to bat in the longer format, mentally we are prepared," said Harmanpreet during a virtual press conference.
SQUAD: Mithali Raj (Captain), Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur (vice-captain), Punam Raut, Priya Punia, Deepti Sharma, Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma, Sneh Rana, Taniya Bhatia (wicket-keeper), Indrani Roy (wicket-keeper), Jhulan Goswami, Shikha Pandey, Pooja Vastrakar, Arundhati Reddy, Poonam Yadav, Ekta Bisht, Radha Yadav.