Day 1 – Session 2: ENG Women chose to bat.
Current RR: 3.74
• Min. Ov. Rem: 62.3
• Last 10 ov (RR): 27/1 (2.70)
Cross fails to recover in time from back spasms as Surrey seamer wins first Test cap
Heather Knight and Laura Wolvaardt pose with the Test trophy • Getty Images
Englandwon the toss and chose to bat first vs South Africa
England awarded two new caps for their one-off Test against South Africa in Bloemfontein. Maia Bouchier will open the batting with Tammy Beaumont while 20-year old Ryana MacDonald-Gay was included in the XI in place of Kate Cross, who is recovering from back spasms.
Cross suffered the injury in the 3rd ODI but trained on the eve of the Test. Captain Heather Knight said he was “not too far away,” from playing but left out with workload considerations and the upcoming Ashes in mind. For that same reason, on what is a historically flat deck, England included an extra seamer in a four-seam, two-spin attack, as the look to distribute overs among more players.
How they will manage that will have to wait for later in the match after Knight chose to bat first in warm, windy conditions with clouds rolling in. That may please Laura Wolvaardt, who also has five seam options and one frontline spinner at her disposal. Sune Luus and Chloe Tryon will provide offspin and left-arm spin options. All South Africa’s players have been capped at Test level before.
The match is the 150th women’s Test to be played, and the first in South Africa in 22 years. It is also the only match of the 21 game international summer that will take place without DRS, which was used for the first time in women’s bilateral games in the white-ball leg of this series.
Cricket South Africa (CSA) explained that they were prioritising the use of DRS in white-ball games, given the cost implications of using the technology, which runs into the thousands of dollars.
South Africa: 1 Laura Wolvaardt (capt), 2 Anneke Bosch, 3 Annerie Dercksen, 4 Sune Luus, 5 Marizanne Kapp, 6 Nadine de Klerk, 7 Chloe Tryon, 8 Sinalo Jafta (wk), 9 Tumi Sekhukhune, 10 Nonkululekho Mlaba, 11 Ayanda Hlubi
England: 1 Tammy Beaumont, 2 Maia Bouchier, 3 Heather Knight (capt), 4 Nat Sciver-Brunt, 5 Danielle Wyatt-Hodge, 6 Amy Jones (wk), 7 Charlie Dean, 8 Sophie Ecclestone, 9, Ryana MacDonald-Gay, 10 Lauren Filer, 11 Lauren Bell
Instant answers to T20 questions
