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Follow UsIf Women’s Test matches were human, and someone asked them, “To be or not to be?” They would probably reply, “I don’t know.”
It’s an extremely fair response, you see because they happen so rarely, and such few teams (only four women teams have played a Test in the last two years) play them that the only thing certain about their future is the uncertainty. Some day, an administrator might just wake up on the wrong side of the bed and announce their demise.
Hence, when the Proteas women leaked 525 runs in a single day at the Chepauk, eyebrows weren’t raised on how clueless they looked out there on Day 1. Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana made hay while the sun shone and notched up a world-record opening partnership.
What happened to South Africa then wasn’t surprising for one more reason. Less than a year ago, both England and Australia played a Test against India in India and lost by 347 runs and 8 wickets, respectively. Australia challenged India with the bat and ball occasionally, but England hardly showed up. They were bowled out for 136 and 131 in their two innings and could only bat for 62 overs in the game.
England lacked the R of resilience; however, South Africa not only had it, but it also became their state of being in the three remaining days of the Test match. The fight was on from the first ball they batted.
Anneke Bosch was the first Proteas batter to show her team that there were no demons on the pitch. She displayed great composure by batting close to her body, watching the ball until very late, and being decisive in front foot and back foot movement. The scorecard will tell you that she scored only 39, but those 39 runs were the lighthouse Laura Wolvaardt, and her women needed to navigate the challenging Chennai conditions.
It was followed by a spectacular show of discipline from Sune Luus and Marizanne Kapp, who batted for 305 balls together. Kapp, especially, looked so solid until Sneh Rana bowled a ripper of a delivery to knock the top of her off stump. She showed decisive footwork on almost all the 141 deliveries she faced, and not for a moment would you have realised that the last red ball game she played was in 2022 and that too in England.
Similarly, Luus also showed great adaptation skills in the sultry conditions of Chennai despite being out of touch with the bat for some time now.
Rana then came on the third morning and blew away the rest of the batting order with exceptional precision, something that has become a pattern for the consecutive Player of the Match in the last two Tests for India. In fact, what that collapse accentuated was how well Luus and Kapp batted the last day to keep blocking ball after ball, navigating one over at a time.
After collapsing for 266, the follow-on was inevitable. However, after bowling 84.3 overs on the trot, the Indian bowlers were wearing down. The ball wasn’t coming out of their hands with the same zip, and the pitch, which was clearly built to last the full four days, remained placid.
Although Deepti Sharma bowled one ball that hardly rose after pitching on a back of a length and crashed hard into Bosch’s pads. Her bat couldn’t come down fast enough to meet the ball. However, post that, what began was a mesmerising quintessential Test match grind.
Skipper Wolvaardt has been in great form in ODIs and T20Is. It’s the Test matches where she has failed to translate potential into performance. She changed that in an unforgettable fashion in Chennai by batting out 314 balls herself! That’s 52.2 overs of batting and batting and batting, all on her own.
It didn’t matter that with a lot more than a day left in the game, they faced inevitable defeat. It was as if every cell of her being was focused on staying at the crease. Run-making became secondary. The fight was all that there was.
Her skipper’s infectious resilience also spread to Luus, who already had a great understanding of what to do on the pitch. This time, she scored most of her runs through boundaries, scoring 18 fours in her 109 runs. Wolvaardt also scored a ton, becoming only the third woman on the planet to have a century in all three formats and the first in the same year.
They batted for 65.4 overs and scored just 190 runs. When Harmanpreet Kaur finally broke their stand by cleaning up Luus, her loud roar dissipated all the frustration that the two batters had built in the Indian side. After their record first innings score, they would have thought that it would be easy for them. After all, if the Test regular Aussies couldn’t last, what could the Proteas women do, who hardly play the format?
But the Proteas not only lasted but also made India bowl 154.4 overs in the second innings. They made India bat again after a follow-on and, in the process, broke many Test records. They made them sweat blood and tears out on the field, and that showed in their fielding, as many catches were dropped, too.
In the end, South Africa did lose the Test by ten wickets.
But they didn't go down without a fight, with the blockathon making India work hard until the last hour of the last day. It kept the audience in their seat. It made them feel and appreciate the grind of Test cricket, where both sides weren’t ready to give each other an inch, and resilience was the only way out.
The fight was all that mattered.
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