England vs India: India seal emphatic 270-run win in historic Lord's Test

0:01Yeah, gone! Gone! He gets his fairytale ending! An epic way to go to a Test Match 100. The London Spirit of First Time win is the most remarkable thing you'll probably ever see in cricket. 604 and final Test Wicket for Stuart Ford. It's ended. We'll win the T20 World Cup. England's captain Ben Stokes, while he is there, England have hope. Hello and welcome. It's all over. History has been made. India have won the first test match ever held here at Lourdes between two women's sides. Imagine a victory 270 and it could honestly have been 300 odd, but for an excellent rear guard from Sophie Eccleston, I've got Mel Jones and Simon Dole alongside me.

0:52But it's been one heck of an occasion to begin with, Mel. Lots and lots of history made, lots and lots of faces. Even had Sachin Tendulkar here this morning wishing the Indian women well. Overall, it's been a terrific time, hasn't it? It's been sort of four days of celebration in a lot of ways. I think it started so superbly well day one when we had all the former players in. Enid Bakewell who if I'm that fit and agile at 85 actually at 55 I'd be happy I'd be absolutely happy and then all of those players sort of arriving feeling part of the momentum of women's cricket again and that was so so lovely to see we had record crowd for for day two it continued on with gates being open today and free tickets but you know wonderful support for both teams so I think there's been a real celebration of of the women's game and for test match cricket for the for the women's side.

1:43It was just a shame that the competition between the two sides couldn't have matched the enormity and the excitement that everyone has shown. Let's stick with India to begin with. Performance-wise, they were asked to bat first on a surface that offered plenty, posted 280 in that first innings and never really looked back from there. And I think the technical ability is just that itch above where England are at from a technical point of view. Does that come from the fact that they play on completely different surfaces over a vast country more often? They are getting so much more exposure to high-quality cricket nowadays as well.

2:21I know England are on that path and the 100 has made a difference from an England cricket point of view and they're developing players. But you look at the young players, and we've seen it in the men's game in India for quite some time now, but they are ready. It doesn't matter whether they're 19, 20, 21, 22, they're ready to perform on the international stage. And, you know, they're going to have more and more young women coming through in the next five to ten years. You imagine that they will only get better and better. And we see some of the older stars. Yes, the Mandanas, the Harman Preet's, those sorts of players, Deepti Sharma.

2:56But the young ones coming through are also showing us that they have the ability to step up straight away onto the big stage. and I think that was one of the things we saw and one of the things I was probably most impressed with. Interesting you said that and I was thinking about sort of the development of a lot of the Indian players. They get into academies so early, so all of a sudden Yastigabhatia who hit the 100, she's in an academy at eight, likewise Deep De Sharma. Cranti Gowd got picked up. So they're in nets with that foundation being set, whereas so often in Australia and England we play sort of softball cricket and sort of have a go and have some fun to try and get players in and whether or not that's just that little point of difference It's different ways to do it.

3:33Has it been, I'm talking sort of maybe the last 10 years or so, has there been a shift in terms of the attitude towards women's cricket in India? It was very much sort of the second cousin and kind of invisible for a little while. But now with the WPL and obviously the superstardom of people like Harman Preet and Smriti Mandana in particular, it seems as though it is being taken as seriously as the men's game. Have you sensed that too? Yeah, I think since the BCCI took over women's cricket, so that was 2005, so that's been quite some time. And so there was still a little bit of a lag where it sort of felt like we've taken it over, but it's still, like you said, the second cousin a little bit.

4:16And I think a couple of the states in India sort of took it on and went, no, we're going to develop a few more players. So it sort of came from within in a little bit. And then I suppose the elevation of World Cups and the fact that, you know, there's more prize money and there's more notoriety, you whack in the WPL as well. So I think there's probably a number of factors coming along there that have sort of added to the BCCI taking it more seriously than what they probably did back in 2005. You mentioned the technical ability, Dooley. Look no further than the bowlers. Kranty Gowd and Siali Satgari with the new ball, where England were wide of the mark sort of 60 % of the time, they were 10 % of the time missing the mark.

4:59They outstripped their counterparts by quite some distance. And that also comes from playing on flatter surfaces in general. You just have to bang away on a good length. You have your variations probably used a little bit more in the shorter formats and more so in India. You might go to a slower ball even in a test match a bit more often if it's holding and gripping. But on those flat surfaces of the subcontinent, you tend to have to bang away on just a very good length. I thought England winning the toss, I didn't think bowling was a bad decision because as we saw throughout the test match, there was enough in it and they just missed their mark.

5:33And as you said, I thought Sauli Satgadi and Kranty Gowd just exposed the lack of what England were able to do and they did it brilliantly. Batting-wise, from a technical point of view, I mean, everybody expects Sriti to come out and make runs. I suppose the only surprise was that she didn't get on the ball, but it was... If you combine the two, she would have been the ball. It was Yastika Batia, who is just as elegant and has just as many strokes, who managed to get up there. The technical ability, there was one thing that was quite stark to me, I think, was that particularly in defence, which you're going to see more of in test matches, they just seemed much more solid, much more sound technically.

6:14And as a result of that, more patient to wait for the bad ball than perhaps their English counterparts fare. Yeah, and the test of batting time, isn't it? I think for some of the England players, batting time meant that they got a little bit more frustrated because they weren't scoring, whereas I don't think that ever sort of entered any of the Indian batter's minds. They knew that they had four days to play. They were sent in to begin with, and it was at Art of Test Match Cricket. They knew that the ball was going to be nipping around early, so they settled themselves in. They figured out a game plan for that.

6:44Then once they were in, they were then deck flattened out, particularly on sessions two and three each day. They found a way to counteract anything that England threw at them then. They came in and out of breaks. They just worked the ball around nicely to whatever Natsi Verbrun offered with the field, which was never really, there was never really a plan to say, oh, I think they're getting them out this way. So everything just felt a little bit easier for them, but they didn't take that for granted. They didn't get ahead of themselves. They just kept planning and sort of putting their plans out in the middle and just ticking off runs.

7:14I think that one of the things that I really noticed, And I think the Australians and probably Laura Volfat do it as well as the use of the feet to the spinners. They were very prepared to come down the pitch and look for one. If the boundary option was there, that's fine. But they all used their feet so much better than I think the Indian players did to the spinners. Very rarely did we see any of the England players come out of their crease and just knock one to mid on, knock one to mid off. That's something I think the Indian players did very well. Yeah, stunning performance all around. Kranty Gowd for her five-wicket haul in the first innings.

7:51They took a lead of 115 into the second innings, which was a huge gap that Yastika Batia and co. exploited to its fullest. But it was Kranty and Hurstbell in the first innings knocking them over 170 that really sort of settled the deal. 22 years of age, huge smile on her face, very, very skilled for somebody that young. She's got a big future, hasn't she? Second test match. Can you believe it, isn't it, Andrew? Tell you what, Jami Rodriguez doesn't often stand above people. No, she is. She's a little taller than Grandy at the moment. I mean, she is so slight. She was also phenomenal in the field.

8:27It was that energy in the field and a really good skill set in the field as well, which she said we're probably going to see her for a long time to come as well. She's been through some – her family has been through some trials and tribulations. She's come from a very small rural area of India. and then you think to yourself she's battled through all of that. I think she was one of the stories where she had to pretend to be a boy to get into the academy and all those sorts of things. And now in the space of six months, her first tour actually here in England last summer was brilliant with the white ball.

8:57She's won a World Cup. She's now got player of the match in a test match at Lord's as well. I hope she learns English very, very quickly, not to say that she has to, but for the fact that I think she's going to be player of the match. quite a lot of media around the world. It would be just lovely to hear firsthand right from the horse's mouth what she's feeling. Yeah, well, India, you can't speak hardly enough of their performance over the three and a bit days of this Test match. What about England, Dooley? Obviously, the disappointment of the World Cup final on Sunday and that quick turnaround was not helpful, you know, but there were five different players in the team in the 11 from those that lost to Australia on the Sunday.

9:41Would you have expected better of them in a home test match? I would have expected better. And I think you can't be over. They've played here more often than any team in the shorter formats, obviously not in the test match situation. But I would have expected a lot better. Disappointing thing, I go back to that bowling in the first sort of morning of the test match, the first two and a half to three hours until Izzy Wong came on for her spell after lunch it just got away on them completely and they couldn't find a consistent line and a consistent length and probably Lauren Bell probably the biggest disappointment we saw her have reasonably good control but she's had a lot of work to do in the last six eight months I get that but if you can't get up for a test match and find a way I know the disappointment would have been there but this is such an occasion they had to find a way.

10:34And then with the bat, just the application, you know, outside of Amy Jones. And even though she was quite aggressive in the first innings, I think her application was still quite good, but nobody really kicked on. So I think Charlotte Edwards will be disappointed with the result in particular, but disappointed with some of the dismissals as well. And just the lack of application, I would say, would be the biggest problem. It's a jam-packed calendar, isn't it? I completely get that and Lourdes has used I think 64 days this summer which is one of their peaks but when you sort of say well we are going to have our first ever test match here at the home of cricket having it four days after a T20 World Cup where you're probably hoping that England's playing in as well probably hasn't set the England side up for success but in saying that at the same point in time I just think that the Indian side prepared so well that you could see the plans already before they even walked out, that everyone walked to their mark.

11:32They knew exactly where they were going, what the team wanted to do. Did it help them getting knocked out a little earlier? Well, maybe. They were in Wormsley, weren't they? Well, they went to Wormsley, yeah. Red ball practice, etc. Did it help them a little more? Were they better prepared than England were coming off the disappointment four days earlier? Yeah. Yeah, there's a fair chance that that's the case. A couple of legends of England cricket calling it a day. Heather Knight and Tammy Bowman didn't get the fairytale ending. did they? Nowhere near the field test. But I suppose, you know, many cricketers, myself included, don't get the chance to actually call it a day anyway.

12:07It gets called on you. We haven't really retired, have we? No, we're still available. But they've had incredible careers. It wouldn't be the way that they would have wanted it to end, but even so, they can be very proud of their achievements and the journey that they've seen throughout the course of the time that they've played. Yeah, and I think both of them more than happy with their decisions too, and that's always a nice place to be. Yes, they would have loved runs today, but I think they'll get the adulation that they deserve as well. You know, 16, 17 years career for both of them. Both have been part of big England wins in World Cups, Ashes wins and the like, and both have played an integral part in the shaping of England cricket, going from purely amateur to semi-professional.

12:52It's been quite... And they're probably, you know, a couple of the last ones were those original contracts from Amy Jones and Nat Civerbrunt, I think it was. So they'll sit back tonight and there'll be another celebration in the rooms, even though they haven't won today, primarily for Heather and Tammy. And I know they'll be still very close to the game as well, so I don't know if we can lose them completely. When Cranty Gowd sort of had the measure of three of those four wickets between the two of them, your heart sank a little bit, but you sort of got us excited for Cranty at the same point in time.

13:24So, yeah, a huge congratulations to both. Before we get on to sort of how things finished up this morning, what about the captaincy for England? Obviously, one of the subplots over the course of the summer has been how good Charlie Dean has been when she's been stood in for Nat Siverbrunt, who obviously is still struggling with the calf injury, etc., etc., not getting any younger. Can you see a situation whereby England have only got three ODIs I think left this summer against Ireland and then plenty of assignments during the course of the winter including a Champions Trophy. Do you see a situation whereby freshening things up in that regard might be the way forward for England as they try to push on and try to catch Australia perhaps?

14:07That's exactly what I would do. And as much as I think, I think England women's cricket need Nat Siverbrunt the batter more than they need Nat Siverbrunt the captain. And that would be the way I would look at it. And it's not an affront on Nat's captaincy. It is what is more important to England women's cricket. And I think her batting and her runs are at the highest importance now that Heather Knight's gone, Tammy Beaumont's gone. That to me would be right at the forefront of my mind and what I've seen from Charlie Dean in recent times I think her cricket mouse her captaincy ability and her ability to get the best out of herself in situations when she has to or when it's tough that to me says captaincy all over and and leadership so that's where I'd be looking and again Nat has done a terrific job she's taken them to a World Cup final again, but I think she is the best player in England by a stretch and I would rather see my best player just bat and get me thousands of runs and I think Charlie is ready and to me that would be where I would go now.

15:18Would that be something that you would say is a bad idea as an Australian fan? Actually, yes. See where you're going there. Not at all. I mean, the game is so much bigger than one person. I think we all know that. And we play team sport. I know it's probably the most individual team sport going around. But when you look at the whole point of having these national teams is to compete and win big titles, isn't it? Ashes, World Cups and the like. And I'm not saying Nat can't take a team to there, but you have a little bit of a reset now. So the next T20 World Cup's two years out, 50 over's another three.

15:57Ashes, you've still got 18 months kind of thing. So you're always sort of trying to plan ahead. And so when I look at that for England, I think how do you get yourselves as a squad to the perfect situation where you're happy with everything across the board just before those tournaments and you've got time. Don't wait to the last minute to say, oh, Nat's done a calf and now, Charlie, in you come. Give people the scaffolding around them to be their very best and success for the team. And if that is at the moment, yep, thanks, Nat, or have the conversation with Nat. And, Charlie, are you ready? That should be happening reasonably quickly.

16:33Okay, wise words, as always, from Jones. Right, so to finish things off, India needed just the four wickets this morning, and they picked them up relatively quickly. Amy Jones went for 54, her second 50 of the match. Izzy Wong was knocked over by Deepti Sharma, as was Lauren Bell. And Sophie Eccleston, who made 50, as I mentioned before, 50 to go along with her Pfeiffer, was the last to go, bowled by Sneer Rana, who finished with 442. and that pretty much wrapped up, well, wraps up everything from us and it wraps up the Test matches. India ran out winners, very comfortable winners in a highly skilled performance by 270 runs.

17:11Thank you very much, you two. I know you've got very... Pausing. Go on. Pausing. What is it? Oh! Pausing. Yes. Because I'm not going anywhere until I hear this. Oh, come on. Yeah. Sorry if we've... We've got the bar. No, no, you go ahead. Mel said, after the poem yesterday for the England football team, Mel said on air that I challenge you to do something for the test match. So sat down this morning and wrote a little something about this test match. So here we go. I'm excited. I hope it's okay. As the morning sun shone over NW8, history beckoned for these women and those who came through the gate.

17:49The celebration of women's cricket highlighted the start of the day. And as the coin went up, it fell England's way. A couple of early wickets for England, but not consistently the right line. It was then time for Jimmy and Smriti to shine. 50 for the skipper and Deepti in full flow. The innings eventually wrapped up with 40 minutes to go. So 285 looked a pretty good start and even better for India when Beaumont had to depart. Day two began in the glorious sunshine at Lourdes. Kranty Gowd with a five for, and her name etched in history on the honours board. India Go again, looking to increase their big lead.

18:31Mandara and Verma, looking sharper than Daggers in his tweed. A test century anywhere is a very special score, but at Lord's for Yastigabhatia, it was worth so much more. Another five for Eccleston, as she toiled and clawed, and finally an Englishwoman on the coveted honours board. 4.57 would be a mountain to climb, and then Tammy went first ball in her very last time. As Father Time looked down on this magnificent field of green, we farewelled Heather Knight, one of the greatest ambassadors we have seen. Five quick wickets for India and England's hope looking dire. Early celebrations in their minds maybe, but Villiers and Jones said, just hold fire.

19:17It would take something magic to find a breakthrough. My goodness, Richagosh, do your hands have glue? Day four underway with India in complete control. Jones departs early. Now it's up to those who bowl. Wrapped up by the spinners, Deepthi and Sne. It's the land of a billion who are all smiles today. So India prevail and they were by far the better team. A test win at the home of cricket, now a reality, no longer a dream. Women's Test Cricket at Lourdes, a celebration and not before time. Rainford Brent, Jones, Farrant in designer outfits looking sublime. It's taken some time, but these women have written a new page.

20:04And this test further proof that they belong on this stage.

20:13there you go i think that's the final word see you next time

20:40you