Prior to this Test match there was a lot of discussion on social media about whether BBC’s Test Match Special would broadcast live coverage of the game, and subsequent disappointment when it transpired that they would not, after TalkSport won the rights for the men’s Tests next year, with which the rights to the women’s Test were bundled.

The universal assumption, given that the match was hours from starting, was that it would pass without full radio coverage in the UK – the first England Test to do so for a decade. So massive credit to TalkSport for upending that assumption, and pulling together a team to commentate remotely on the final two days [insert hindsight here] of the match from their headquarters beneath The Shard on London’s South Bank.

Raf got a message from the producer whilst she was teaching her Sports Journalism students at Bournemouth University and got on a train; Phoebe Graham got a call when she was training with Thunder in Manchester and got into her car. Less than 24 hours later we found ourselves walking together at 3:30am (coffees and Google Maps in hand) with revellers still spilling out of clubs and pubs from the night before, trekking 10 minutes from our hotel at London Bridge over to TalkSport to… talk sport – and of course one sport in particular!

The setup is not really too different to watching from home – you are sat in a small conference room, in front of a huge screen, showing the “raw” TV feed from the ground – so you are seeing the same pictures that everyone watching on TNT is seeing in their living rooms, but without the comms or any ads. You can hear the effects mic, so you get a sense of the atmosphere, but you are at the mercy of the TV producer as to what you actually see.

It is virtually impossible to follow who is fielding where, and you won’t know a sub fielder has entered the fray until suddenly Harleen Deol or Richa Gosh pop up; but you obviously get a prime view of every delivery – much more so than if you were at the ground, where the most you’ll have is a small screen to catch a replay on.

With it being an early start, we’d brought a round of croissants with us to have for breakfast during the “lunch” break. Not just any croissants either – M&S croissants! And they did get eaten, but not during the lunch break, because there was, dear reader, no lunch break, as England were bowled out for 130-something for the second time in two days.

Of course, this isn’t the first time England have lost a Test match this year; but against Australia in the Women’s Ashes, it felt like they were competing. They fought. They took it to a fifth day. They came within 100 runs of victory. None of those caveats were applicable here. The cavernous DY Patil stadium in Navi Mumbai is 4,500 miles from Trent Bridge; but it might as well have been 4,500 light years.

Having opted not to enforce the follow-on yesterday, everyone expected India to continue batting this morning, at least whilst Harmanpreet was still at the crease; but the Indians surprised everyone by declaring on their overnight lead of 478.

Given that no one has ever chased even 200 to win a women’s Test, let alone nearly 500, the odds were very much stacked against England. But it is the commentator’s job to be optimistic about the state of the game, even at 4am on a chilly winter’s morning in south London, so we gave England the benefit of the doubt – if they could battle their way through today, and take into the final day, they’d have a chance to at least redeem their embarrassment at being bowled out for 136 yesterday.

As the kids say… LOL!

There will be some debate once again about whether England were bad or India were good; and perhaps we won’t really know the answer to that question until the end of next week’s Test between India and Australia, but right now I’m leaning towards “India were good”. They batted positively on Day 1; and they bowled brilliantly on Days 2 and 3. In Renuka and Pooja, they’ve perhaps found themselves a genuine “Shrubsole and Brunt”, with Reunka swinging it in like Anya and Pooja bringing the KSB fight and aggression. Between them they did for England’s top order – Dunkley was again the architect of her own demise, guiding a half-tracker into the hands of point; but Beaumont, Knight and Sciver-Brunt all got more or less unplayable deliveries.

The spinners then took over to run through the tail, with Deepti adding another 4 wickets to the 5fer she took in England’s first dig. It is interesting to consider what Deepti’s role is in this team. Is she a batter who bowls a bit? A bowler who contributes with the bat? She’s not a classic “genuine allrounder”, in the sense of someone who would get into the team on the strength of either role. She once made a big ODI century against Ireland, and took a 6fer against Sri Lanka back in 2016; but (ignoring “The Thing”) she is generally more of a player about whom the phrase “chipped in” might be written.

This then was probably the game of her life. After making a crucial half century in India’s first innings, which took them from “this is a decent score” to “only India can win from here”, she then exploited the red cherry, and a pitch she’ll want to carry round for the rest of her life, to make the ball dance around like a prima ballerina, getting the kind of turn that I’ve only ever seen before from the very best leg-spinners in the women’s game – Amelia Kerr and Sune Luus, before she lost her mojo.

England knew they had problems against spin – hence Jon Lewis’s “Spin Camp” earlier this year. But only one of the players on that camp actually played in this match – the disastrously-out-of-nick-anyway Sophia Dunkley – so much good it did!

To be fair to England though, this was a bit of a one-off – Deepti will probably never bowl like that again, and the batters at the spin camp were being prepped for the Asian World Cups to come in the next 18 months, not this Test match. The great rugby coach Clive Woodward once said: “Judge me on the World Cup”. I’d imagine Jon Lewis will be saying something very similar when he hands his report back to his bosses at the ECB. Clive Woodward went on  to win that World Cup. If Lewis goes on to do the same, all this will be forgotten. If not…