India’s Dominant Victory: Harmanpreet Credits Bowlers in Historic Women’s Test Triumph

Navi Mumbai, Dec 16: Skipper Harmanpreet Kaur gave credit to her bowlers for securing India a 347-run victory as the country hosted a women’s Test match after a gap of nine years, the huge win against England Women at the DY Patil Stadium here on Saturday setting the record for the biggest win by run-margin in the Women’s cricket.

The Indian bowlers bundled out England twice in two days, getting them out for 136 and 131 runs respectively in two innings of the one Test match of the current series. Off-spinner Deepti Sharma claimed nine wickets in the match for 37 runs while Pooja Vastrakar picked four. Spinners Sneh Rana, Rajeshwari Gayakwad and debutant pacer Renuka Singh Thakur claimed two wickets apiece in the match as India bowled out England twice for 260-odd runs.

 

“The credit goes to the bowlers, whatever fields they were given they bowled according to that. Your job (as captain) becomes easier when your bowlers can bowl at the right spots. They bowled according to the plan,” said Harmanpreet in the post-match press conference here on Saturday.

 

Asked about how she arrived at her bowling changes and unusual field positionings, the 32-year-old Indian captain said she got those ideas after batting for a fairly longish period on the wicket. Harmanpreet scored a crucial 49 in the first innings and a fighting unbeaten 44 as India declared their innings on 186/6 to set England the target of scoring 479 runs to win the Test.

 

“You get a lot of ideas about the behaviour of a pitch when you bat on it. When I was batting in both the innings, I got a fair idea of how the pitch was behaving at what time and which bowler and field placements would be best at that point in time. Sometimes you set fields to make them change their plans — we noticed their plan to sweep the off-spinners so we had a fielder at short square leg,” she said.

 

Harman said everything went according to plan for India in this Test.

 

“Everything went according to the plan. We got the score that we wanted and the bowlers did a good job, both medium pacers and spinners knew their plans and performed accordingly. The biggest positive was our fielding, especially in a long game when you have to field for 90 overs (in a day) it is very important to maintain the energy. We managed to set the tone with our fielding,” said Harmanpreet, who was playing only her fourth Test match since making her debut in 2014.