Knight hails England’s return to red-ball game

Captain Heather Knight has welcomed news that England Women will play their first Test match since 2019 this June.

Ahead of a month-long series with New Zealand in September, England will host India throughout June and July, with a red-ball opener at Bristol County Ground on June 16-19 before three ODIS and three T20 fixtures. The news was confirmed by the England and Wales Cricket Board yesterday, a month after the Board of Control for Cricket in India’s announcement that India would play England this summer, in their first Test match since 2014.

June’s Test will be played just shy of two years since England’s last outing in the format, during the 2019 Ashes at Taunton. While women’s cricket has focused on T20 and oneday internationals to help grow the game, the most traditional format has taken a back seat and England largely only play it during the Ashes.

The India Test will only be England’s 11th in 15 years, and Knight’s eighth cap – compared to men’s captain Joe Root’s 103 in that time. Knight acknowledged the rarity in a press conference: “It’s really important that we keep Test cricket going in the women’s game. Realistically,

T20 is the sport that’s going to grow women’s cricket around the world and we’ve seen that over the last five years. But I’d love to see the multiformat series that we do for the Ashes as the norm going forward.

“One of my proudest moments in an England shirt is scoring a Test century, and that speaks to the way that Test cricket is seen.”

With England making their first tour of Pakistan in October, this year promises to be much livelier than 2020. But it was notable that no major venues are included, the ECB instead opting for smaller county grounds despite record-breaking crowds of 82,000 at the T20 Women’s World Cup in Australia last year.