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On Monday, July 1, the Indian women’s cricket team registered a commanding 10-wicket win against South Africa in the one-off Test match at the MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. The top performers for India across four days in the Test match were Shafali Verma and Sneh Rana, scoring a double hundred and picking up an eight-wicket haul in an innings respectively.
For the unversed, the Indian captain, Harmanpreet Kaur, won the toss and opted to bat first, and her decision paid dividends on Day 1 itself. The Indian openers Shafali Verma and Smriti Mandhana stitched together a partnership of 292 runs, which is the second highest stand in history of women’s Tests.
Shafali Verma went on to become only the second Indian woman to score a double hundred in Tests after Mithali Raj. Her opening partner Smriti Mandhana got dismissed for 149, while the rest of the batters, including Jemimah Rodrigues, Harmanpreet Kaur, and Richa Ghosh scored fifties, to help propel the India to 603/6 declared in the first innings, the highest total in the history of women’s Tests.
India were exceptional with the ball in the first innings, bundling out the South Africans for 266 runs after Sneh Rana picked up eight out of the 10 wickets. Harmanpreet Kaur led-team went on to enforce the follow-on, which prompted a great response from the South African top order.
The captain Laura Wolvaardt and Sune Luus stitched together a second-wicket stand of 190 runs, notching up their respective hundreds, to keep South Africa in the game. But the Indian bowlers dismissed them in quick succession before knocking over the rest of the batting lineup for 373 runs in a complete team effort, with Sneh Rana completing a 10-wicket haul across both innings.
South Africa managed to set up a 37-run target for India despite being down and out of the Test match from the beginning. Shafali Verma and the debutant Shubha Satheesh knocked off the runs in the final session of the fourth and final day, to ensure that India won the Test match by a big margin of 10 wickets.
