India took control of the Test against England in Navi Mumbai, with 4 batters making scores in the sixties on Day 1 taking them to 410-7 at the close.

England went into the game with a seam-heavy attack, selecting 3 specialist pacers in Kate Cross, Lauren Bell and Lauren Filer, plus Nat Sciver-Brunt; and just 2 spinners in Sophie Ecclestone and Charlie Dean, with Alice Capsey left on the bench, and no other serious spin options. (Knight isn’t going to bowl herself for more than a handful of overs, and Sophia Dunkley isn’t a serious option, though she might send down a couple of overs if England get desperate.)

To justify these selections the seamers needed to take wickets, and they did get two early breakthroughs with the new ball inside the first ten overs, but it was mostly hard labour for them thereafter, though a magic ball from Lauren Bell – probably the best ball she has bowled for England – added the wicket of Jemimah; and a tired shot from Sneh Rana saw her bowled by Nat Sciver. On the other side of the balance-sheet, the 3 specialist seamers conceded 212 runs between them, at a rate of 4.8, as the Indians cashed-in.

To be fair to the Seamers Union, Nat Sciver-Brunt was the exception, finishing the day as England’s most economical bowler, going for just 25 from 11 overs. She didn’t look particularly threatening, but whatever she was doing differently, it was obviously working!

Overall though… and stop me if you’ve heard this before… we seem to have put quite a lot of eggs in the basket marked “Seam” and then discovered that the spinners were far more effective. I guess it is difficult to disentangle the spinners from who the spinners actually are – Sophie Ecclestone is Sophie Ecclestone, and she’s Sophie Ecclestone for a reason; while Charlie Dean was almost as good, extracting genuine bounce and turn. Would Alice Capsey have done the  same? Possibly not, but it feels unlikely she would have done any worse than Filer, who didn’t take any wickets and was a run an over more expensive than anyone else, and she would also have significantly strengthened the batting.

UPDATE: The consensus seems to be (including from Ecclestone herself, if what Lauren Bell said in the press conference is to be believed) that she had an off-day. I agree that it wasn’t her best day, but she wasn’t terrible by any stretch. I guess it is all relative – an Ecclestone off-day is still a better day than 99% of anyone else!!

Anyways… let’s just hope India haven’t picked any spinners and we don’t have to bat last, eh?

To give them their due, the Indians played very, very well – positively, without being reckless – this wasn’t Jonball. Satheesh (69), Jemimah (68) and Yastika (66) were all selections you could argue with, but all justified themselves here. I guess all 3 will be kicking themselves that they didn’t push on past the 60s… there’s more to life than The Beatles and The Stones you know guys! Meanwhile Deepti also made it into the 60s, and remains not out overnight with the chance to push on tomorrow towards the 90s (Boyzone! Steps!) and beyond (Taylor awaits!).

The game really ought to be beyond England already – 400 is a lot of runs, and needless to say no one has ever lost a women’s Test having scored 400 (or for that matter, 300) runs in the 1st innings. But records are there to be broken, and India aren’t Australia, who England weren’t a million miles from overhauling after they scored 473 in their 1st dig at Trent Bridge last summer, so there is something to play for nonetheless. With no multi-format series to worry about, there are no excuses for playing for a draw – England’s batters need to go out there tomorrow, assuming the bowlers can wrap things up, and make hay the way India did today, and we’ll have a game on our hands.

This week:

• English domestic restructure: is it joy to the world?
• England contracts for Bouchier & Gibson, but disappointment for Davies
• England beat India in the 1st T20, but how convinced were we?

Heather Knight said in yesterday’s pre-match press conference that she wanted to silence the crowd at Mumbai’s giant Wankhede Stadium, and England certainly did that with a big win in the 1st T20.

England got off to the worst possible start, losing the wickets of Sophia Dunkley and Alice Capsey in the first over to Renuka, a bowler who continues to be a much tougher opponent on the field than she looks on paper. She doesn’t swing it miles; she doesn’t make it dance off the pitch; and she isn’t especially quick; but a bit like Sophie Ecclestone, she has control of the ball and that counts for so much when you combine it with a little street-smarts. Plans are nothing if you can’t execute them, and conversely if you can execute them perfectly, they are everything, and that’s the simple secret of Renuka (and Eccclestone’s) success.

Lydia Greenway said in the innings break that Dunkley’s was an “unlucky dismissal”; but to turn the old snooker adage – that the more you practice, the luckier you get – on its head: in cricket, the worse nick you’re in, the unluckier you get. Dunks didn’t commit to the shot, and she paid the price. She did have one big knock in WBBL, but it doesn’t seem to have altered the general trajectory of her form over the past few months, which remains in the bucket. My guess is that England will give her at least one more game, but with Maia Bouchier waiting in the wings, she is perhaps drinking quite late in the Last Chance Wetherspoons.

To give Dunkley her due though, she did at least try to play a shot, unlike Capsey who was bowled blocking down the District Line when the ball was taking the Metropolitan. It was embarrassing, but… which of us didn’t do something embarrassing when we were teenagers? Enough said!

Ultimately it didn’t matter anyway, because Danni Wyatt – in an innings perfectly timed ahead of Saturday’s WPL auction – and Nat Sciver-Brunt stepped up and added 138 runs for the next wicket off just 87 balls. From 2-2, England reached 140 without further loss and with 5 overs still to put a cherry on the cake. Neither Wyatt (75 off 47) nor Sciver (77 off 53) went mad – they didn’t take too many risks – but they piled-on enough runs to give England a decent platform to have a tilt at 200 in the death phase.

They didn’t quite get there, but they did more than enough to put the game out of reach, mainly thanks to Amy Jones (23 off 9) who was able to play the same role for England that she executed so well for Perth Scorchers in WBBL – late runs at a decent clip to turn a decent score into a big-un!

On a pretty good wicket, with a home crowd behind them, you can never count India out, even if they do need nearly 200, and they got ahead of the game with 53 off the powerplay. (England had early made 44 in the same phase.)

But it was the introduction of the spinners in the 7th and 8th overs that turned proceedings back in England’s favour, with Sophie Ecclestone conceding just 2 runs off the 7th over, and Sarah Glenn 3 off the 8th. In purely numeric terms, it didn’t make a huge difference – the required rate went from 10-point-something to 11-point-something – but psychologically, it felt like India were chasing the game from thereon; and although Harmanpreet brought Freya Kemp (who earlier in the innings had taken a wicket with her first ball back bowling for England) sharply back down to earth, hitting her for 3 boundaries in an over which cost 18 in all, that didn’t change. Glenn bowled another very decent over to Harman, who found just 1 run off the bat, and it was enough to panic her into trying to manufacture a cut off Ecclestone in the following over, losing her stumps in the process.

Richa and Shafali teamed-up for a little resistance, and were hitting at 9-an-over, but they needed to be going at 12… then 13… then 14… then… you get the idea! A crowd that had been singing noisily a couple of hours before, could only watch on in trappist silence as England turned the screw.

It was far from the perfect performance by England, and surprisingly for a match where 350 runs were scored, it wasn’t the most entertaining; but it was utterly professional. With momentum so important on a short, sharp tour like this one, it puts England very firmly in the driving seat.