Women’s Test Cricket | Shafali scores double ton; Indian batters smash 525 runs in a day to script history at Chepauk

Indian women rewrite history with a record-breaking batting display in a single day against South Africa in Chepauk.

A batting masterclass from Indian women belted out a new test match history with the team amassing 525 days on a batting paradise at Chepauk in a single day, the Day One of the One Off Test against South African Women.

No men or women’s team has batted so beautifully and belligerently on the opening day of a test match to score so much and so fast that the few thousand fans at the venue could not believe their date with cricketing history at Chepauk, the greatly hallowed ground in the country, yet again.

The day though began like any usual test match with the sun sprinkling golden dust from the nearby bay. Masabata Klaas was running in hard from the red-green tinged roof pavilion end and a golden-haired Annerie Dercksen strode fast with a gleaming red cherry in hand from the Wallajah Road end. It was a purely magical sight. One could only wonder why it took nearly 50 years for the women to play a test match here.

The new ball bowlers kept it straight, with a little swing, and the Indian openers, Smriti Mandhana, in the form of her life and Shafali Verma, searching for big runs, playing straight, calmly with caution, to shoo away the early shine. Morning was still waking up in the fields of grass. After about nine overs, the batting masterclass started like a perfect sunshine. If Smriti fascinated with her cover drives, Shafali thrilled the sparse crowd with her breath-taking straight drives. Scoring at will and tandem, the openers who share a secret bond similar to the other great opening pairs, piled the runs in boundaries. Smriti started with a silken front foot cover drive, then a backfoot drive, a lazy square drive, and a stop-drive, all through covers as soon as Nadine de Klerk and Tumi Sekhukhune, came on.

A few years ago, Virat Kohli had said cover drives are therapeutic. Casual, laidback and lazy, Smriti still showed the how’s and why’s of that statement. She was threading the covers and extra-covers like a shooting star in a sky with million stars. All that one could was watch and mutter - ooh, woah, wow. Or just gasp in disbelief at the subtlety of her wrists, the mild-thuds and the rustling of the leaves of grass.

At the other end, Shafali was focused and the South African line of bowling straight helped her immensely. She likes the ball in front of her eyes. She is usually at her best playing straight. They served it straight to her. She curbed her instincts initially, and drove straight and on the ground, whenever the ball was pitched up, except for one swat for a six.

Both the batters were focussed, and mostly pressed forward to drive through the gaps, and were a bit helped by clumsy fielding by their opponents. Both had peppered the boundary with ease by the time they got to their fifties, and shortly thereafter to lunch. South Africa Captain Laura Wolvaardt was largely invisible.