On Tuesday, the England and Wales Cricket Board issued an apology for not being able to provide a fresh wicket for the highly anticipated England-India women’s Test to be played from Wednesday.
As the two teams lock horns at the County Ground in Bristol, they’ll have to make do with a surface that has already had 37 overs’ worn out since it was used for a T20 Blast fixture last week.
“We are all disappointed that the wicket for the LV= Insurance Test match against India will have had 37 overs played on it. We know that England Women deserve a fresh wicket and we are sorry that we were unable to provide that in this instance,”
the ECB statement reads.
The ECB did cite the late entry of the Test into the cricketing calendar as one reason behind the issue, with first-class grounds busy across the country. But, he quickly added that the problem “shouldn’t have (still) arisen”, besides promising to “make sure it doesn’t happen in the future.”
The England-India women’s Test has been anticipated by fans and experts alike ever since the two countries announced it in April. India are about to end their seven-year drought in the Test arena with the Bristol encounter. With them having beaten the English women away in 2006 and 2014, there is an extra spice to the contest.
Thus, England captain Heather Knight said it isn’t ideal not to have a fresh pitch for such a game. She even mentioned that there were efforts made to have the surface changed once they were made aware of the same last week. But their attempt didn’t bear any fruit.
“We found out last week. We obviously tried to get it changed but it was a little bit too late for that to happen. It’s unfortunate but it still could play very well,”
Knight was quoted as saying by The Telegraph.
India skipper Mithali Raj, on the other hand, chose to stay away from the pitch talk and stressed the importance of “thought process” and “strategies” ahead of the fixture.
