'I Definitely Want More Tests, It Is Something Every Cricketer Wants': Harmanpreet Kaur

Among four nations competing in the current Future Tours Program (FTP) cycle that runs from 2022-25, Indian women's team will play the least number of Test matches.

Indian women's team skipper Harmanpreet Kaur, who has so far represented national team in only three Test matches in her long career, desires to play more red-ball matches at the international level going forward. The 34-year-old said that there should be more Test matches for women in domestic cricket so that the players learn art of playing Test cricket. Notably, among four nations competing in the current Future Tours Program (FTP) cycle that runs from 2022-25, Indian women's team will play the least number of Test matches. India will play two Tests at home in the 2023-24 season. The team had last played a Test match against Australia in 2021. In the current FTP cycle, England are playing the maximum five Tests while Australia and South Africa will play four and three Tests, respectively.

“As a player, I definitely want more Tests because as a growing kid, we saw more Tests on TV than T20s. Nowadays it's a lot of fun playing T20s but Test cricket is something every cricketer wants to play,” Harmanpreet said on the Sky Sports Cricket Podcast.

“This year we have two Tests - one against England and one against Australia - and I hope those games can make a huge impact on women's cricket and hopefully in the future we will keep getting more Test matches. We have to bring back Test matches in women's cricket because it's very important for women's cricket,” she added.

Harmanpreet, meanwhile, mentioned how domestic cricket has improved massively since the days she used to play.

“Trust me, (domestic cricket) has improved a lot. Initially when I started playing, we hardly got domestic games but for the last couple of years, domestic level has improved a lot. We are getting more games and some domestic games are live also, people can watch on TV. It is improving day by day but in my early days we used to play two- and three-day games which we are really missing, and I'm sure after these two Test matches hopefully we'll get two-day matches back. The more cricket we get, the more improvement we'll see in women's cricket,” she added.