After a thrilling ODI series, the Australian and Indian women’s cricket teams will meet in the pink ball day-night Test match at the Carrara Oval in Queensland from Thursday.
Due to a string of injuries to players such as Beth Mooney (hamstring), Rachael Haynes (hamstring) and Sophie Molineux (got hit in the face) in the ODI series, Australian women’s team coach Matthew Mott indicated that some new faces might get the chance to make their Test debuts. “We are still assessing a number of our injured players and we’ve got two more sessions before we actually play the Test. There’s a bit to go yet but you’ll definitely see some new faces,” Mott said in a virtual media interaction.
A few players appeared out of rhythm in the ODI series post the two-week quarantine. Ellyse Perry was one of them but she seems to have found her magic weapon - swing. “The real positive, after speaking to Ben Sawyer, our bowling coach, was that she was swinging the ball. She probably just struggled to adapt to the left-handers and that's something where we as a team had far too many extras as well. It is something we will look to rectify in the shorter formats going forward because I think it was 32 or 34 extras yesterday,” said the 47-year-old.
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While praising tournaments such as the Women's Big Bash League and the Australian domestic T20 competition, Mott called for a full-fledged Indian Premier League for the girls. “I know there’s been some IPL Women’s action (Women’s T20 Challenge). It is just the next thing that needs to happen. Our players would love to get over there at some stage.”
“Players have got opportunities they might not have had before in key positions and I think that’s where the learning happens. The ownership of having to bat and win a game for your time has improved all our players and I don’t think there’s any coincidence. You look at all our players of this squad here and a number of players have come through the WBBL," he added.
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Although this will be the maiden pink-ball Test for the visiting side, Mott has already been impressed by the Indian pace attack led by Jhulan Goswami in the limited-overs leg and believes they will do well. “Their opening attack has been outstanding. Our batters in the powerplay have had to work really hard for their runs. Meghna (Singh) has bowled extremely well. Goswami is a world-class player and has been for a long time and Vastrakar (Pooja) as well. So, it is a different type of attack and that is going to be well suited to pink-ball cricket and it will be an outstanding challenge for us as a batting unit,” he said.
Watch Indian Women's Team play its maiden pink ball D/N Test against Australia LIVE on SONY SIX (English) & SONY TEN 4 (Tamil &Telugu) channels starting 30th September 2021 to 3rd October 2021, 10:00 am IST onwards.
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