Bristol: India Women will face England Women in a Test match beginning from Wednesday, June 16. India played their last Test match in November 2014. Even after that, the pitch that is going to be used for the Test match will not be a fresh one.
The ECB in a statement said: "We are all disappointed that the wicket for the LV= Insurance Test match against India will have had 37 overs played on it. We know that England Women deserve a fresh wicket and we are sorry that we were unable to provide that in this instance."
The England captain Heather Knight expressed her displeasure, she said, "I guess it's obviously not ideal. We'd much prefer to be on a fresh one but it is what it is. And we don't know how it's going to play necessarily."
Former England cricketer Alex Hartley also expressed her views in a Tweet:
The ECB, in the statement justified by saying that the series was not planned and thus a stadium could not be found. "With the Test only being added to the calendar in mid-April, coupled with the lack of available first-class grounds, we knew a fresh TV pitch was going to be a challenge. We accept that this issue shouldn't have arisen and we will make sure it doesn't happen in the future," the statement read.
India Women Squad: Jemimah Rodrigues, Smriti Mandhana, Punam Raut, Mithali Raj(c), Harmanpreet Kaur, Deepti Sharma, Jhulan Goswami, Taniya Bhatia(w), Shikha Pandey, Poonam Yadav, Radha Yadav, Arundhati Reddy, Shafali Verma, Indrani Roy, Priya Punia, Pooja Vastrakar, Sneh Rana, Ekta Bisht
England Women Squad: Tammy Beaumont, Lauren Winfield Hill, Heather Knight(c), Natalie Sciver, Amy Ellen Jones(w), Georgia Elwiss, Fran Wilson, Katherine Brunt, Natasha Farrant, Sophie Ecclestone, Sophia Dunkley, Mady Villiers, Emily Arlott, Kate Cross, Anya Shrubsole