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…

In the break between innings, TNT showcased a couple of the other sports on offer for the princely sum of £29.99 per month. We started with men’s netball (or “basketball” as I believe our American friends call it) before being treated to five minutes of Ultimate Fighting. At least… I think it was Absolute Fighting – it was someone getting the absolute pulp beaten out of them – so come to think of it, it might just have been a repeat of the last 20 overs of England’s first innings.

The day started well enough for England, with Ecclestone wrapping up the Indian tail, taking a catch off Lauren Bell to dismiss Deepti, before bagging the wickets of Renuka and Rajeshwari Gayakwad. The general consensus among the media and commentators seems to be that Ecclestone was poor yesterday, and Lauren Bell appeared to agree with this in the press conference, presumably indicating that Ecclestone herself  wasn’t happy either; and I agree she wasn’t at her best, but still… even if slightly off-song, where would England be without her?

As India had the previous day, England lost two early wickets. The first of these was exactly the one you predicted, but given that India are now a batter down (Satheesh Shubha has a broken finger) I think it evens things up generously that England also have someone in their top 3 who is unable to bat. Heather Knight joined She-Who-It-Is-Genuniely-Starting-To-Feel-Unfair-To-Name back in the dugout, but then Nat Sciver-Brunt and Tammy Beaumont looked to be digging in and things started to feel like they were getting back on track. Not “comfortable” entirely, but not dreadful.

I’m in two minds about the Beaumont run out. The editor of this site spoke for many:

And I sort-of get that, but… England needed to be positive, and there was a single there – TB is one of the sharpest runners in the game, and even though there was a critical moment of hesitation, she would still have made it if it wasn’t for an absolutely exceptional pick-up and throw from Pooja, swooping like an osprey on a juicy pike. It was the fielding equivalent of getting an unplayable delivery, and sometimes you just have to take that on the chin and say well played.

It did mean though the England were just one wicket away from turning a drama into a crisis, and inevitably with Wyatt’s wicket the game was probably up. Amy Jones lasted about as long as you’d expect. (Don’t believe me? Believe Alyssa Healy, who was caught on the stump mic at Trent Bridge saying something to the tune of: “Why does she always do this?”)

And then England’s long, long tail came home to roost, with Sophie Ecclestone coming in at 7. Ecclestone won’t thank me for saying it, but she is a tail-ender. A very handy tail-ender, but a tail-ender nonetheless, and once the ball started spinning, neither she nor anyone else had any answers. It was carnage, with more turns than the Monaco Grand Prix, as England collapsed so hard I had to make on-the-fly changes to my charting code!!

With England on the floor, and a second back-to-back Test match for India to play next week, surely they would enforce the follow-on and finish the job asap? But no! They seem to have decided ahead of time that they weren’t going to use the follow-on, so… they didn’t. Even in these exceptional circumstances, when they could have had the game done and dusted in two days.

Because, as subsequent events suggest, they almost certainly would have had England at least 6 or 7 down, which is where they themselves got to, as England’s spinners turned the tables in the afternoon. The 3 specialist seamers between them bowled just 8 overs, taking no wickets, whilst Ecclestone and Dean did the hard yards – 34 overs for 6 wickets, 4 of them to Dean, whose ability to be able to turn the ball (something (for all her brilliance) Ecclestone doesn’t usually do too much) meant that England could claim to have decisively won that afternoon.

There is, of course, absolutely no chance whatsoever of them winning the game.

But at least they won the afternoon on Day 2.

And Lauren Bell remains undismissed in Test cricket.

I think they call that: taking the positives.

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.