India vs England one-off women’s Test: Captains Harmanpreet Kaur & Heather Knight say their teams will look to play attacking cricket to force a result | Cricket News

One of the recent conversations around women’s Test matches has been a need to have five-day games, instead of four-day ones, and it’s a subject on which England captain Heather Knight has a strong opinion.She has stressed on the need for five-day games to drive more results, given women play a lot fewer Test matches than the men. Since November 2017 till this year, only seven women’s Test matches have been played, and only one ended in an outright result – the last one between Australia and England earlier this year, which was a five-day affair.
With four-day Tests stipulating 100 overs to be bowled per day, Knight said there has to be some proactive planning to push for a result. “We might have to accelerate the game artificially a little bit. In four days, you have to force the result a little bit more,” she said.

Squad 🤝
Test Match 🔜#EnglandCricket pic.twitter.com/cQCG8m996v
— England Cricket (@englandcricket) December 13, 2023
India captain Harmanpreet Kaur too said that her team’s attitude would be to force a win.
“It’s a four-day game, so you need to have the mindset that you will look to win,” Harmanpreet said.
“Rather than just thinking that you have to last in a four-day game, in these two Tests, our approach will be to play to win. We are a litle short on experience in this format but still, we can manage. Our batting is sorted, we have played some good cricket. In the bowling too, Deepti (Sharma) and Sneh (Rana) are there, their spells will hopefully get us wickets.”

England have lost three and drawn five Tests since their last win in January 2014, which came in Perth against Australia, and Knight said her team is keen to change the record. India, on the other hand, drew both the away Tests they played in 2021 (in Australia and in England) and won the last time they played a Test at home – in Mysore against South Africa, a match in which Harmanpreet and Smriti Mandhana featured.

! 👏 👏
Captain has her eyes set on the Test match 👌 👌#TeamIndia | #INDvENG | @ImHarmanpreet | @IDFCFIRSTBank pic.twitter.com/wYlGmDsBnv
— BCCI Women (@BCCIWomen) December 13, 2023
“It feels like a long time since we’ve won a Test,” said Knight. “We’ve had a lot of draws and everything we are working towards is about how we want to play the game and if we look after that, hopefully we will come out with a nice result.”
Short turnaround
While the players picked in India’s squad for the Tests (against England and later against Australia) but not the T20Is had some practice time in Mumbai, there was also an intra-squad four-day match that most players took part in when head coach Amol Muzumdar oversaw a camp last month. Harmanpreet said that the switch in format, given there has been only a three-day break between the T20Is and the Test, would be challenging for the players. But the key would be to keep things simple in the mind and not complicate matters.
“I know after white-ball cricket, it will be a little challenging. The bowling unit got 10-15 days to prepare. They understood how the red ball behaves. As batting and bowling units, we have tried to cover up as much as we could,” she said. “We want to play positive cricket and that is something that we have discussed in the team meeting as well. It is all about (the) mind game. We cannot keep thinking that we played a Test match two years ago and some girls are new in the side. The (colour of) the ball has changed but the approach will be the same.”

The joy, excitement & pride of wearing 🇮🇳 whites 😀
And a special message 💬 to the fans ft. @JemiRodrigues 👌👌#TeamIndia | #INDvENG | @IDFCFIRSTBank pic.twitter.com/EYmNqfDsU5
— BCCI Women (@BCCIWomen) December 13, 2023
The Indian captain also spoke about going for aggressive field placements.
“The field placements and bowling can be attacking and we have discussed winning sessions too. Hopefully, whatever we have prepared in the last two days, we will be able to execute it in the middle,” she said.
While Harmanpreet referred to “butterflies in the stomach” as a big moment in her career approaches, Knight said that the unknown factor of playing a Test in India did result in some anxiety in her dressing room as well.

Smiles 🔛
Headshots ✅
We are just 1️⃣ Day away from the #INDvENG Test 👏 👏#TeamIndia | @IDFCFIRSTBank pic.twitter.com/2ugsmIvdFH
— BCCI Women (@BCCIWomen) December 13, 2023
“We had a day to travel up here after the T20 series and we’ve only had two days to prep, so it’s a really quick turnaround and we don’t play Test cricket very often,” said Knight. “Naturally, it’s something we’ve talked about and there’s bound to be more anxiety and more worry and more stress around the group, purely because it’s something we’ve not played often.”