Pooja Vastrakar shows what she's made up of

“The more you play Test cricket, long-form cricket, the better your skills get. That’s why we backed her Pooja Vastrakar for this Test, so that she bowls more and gains confidence. We saw her confidence as she bowled and picked up wickets.” 

When Indian skipper Harmanpreet Kaur said the above after India’s 347-run-victory against England in the last Test, her chances of expecting an even better performance from Pooja Vastrakar would have been low. 

After all, she would bowl against the mighty Australian team, which boasts of dominating batters. Moreover, she would again be bowling on a pitch that would suit spinners more than pacers. 

But Pooja Vastrakar clearly doesn’t believe in all that. Because after being asked to bowl first by Alyssa Healy, Vastrakar not only bowled well, but she was the strike bowler for Harmanpreet and bowled with confidence, precision, clarity and intent. She ended with figures of four wickets for 53 runs, and Australia folded for 219. 

Harmanpreet gave her the new ball today, unlike the last game, where off-spinner Sneh Rana shared the new ball along with Renuka Thakur. And this time, Vastrakar repaid the confidence shown by her skipper with interest. 

Bowling against Ellyse Perry first up, she was hit for a four on her first ball against the legendary batter. It was a good length ball on a fifth stump line that moved away just after pitching, and Perry played it between the close-in fielders for a four towards third-man. But on the next delivery, she drew enough seam movement from the same spot to evade Perry’s defence and break her stumps. 

It wasn’t exactly a setup, but the drastically different nature of the movement that Vastrakar got flummoxed Ellyse Perry, a batter who averages 73 in 19 innings. What’s more impressive is that Vastrakar has outdone some of the best batters in world cricket in the last week or so. 

If Perry's dismissal was like an announcement of Vastrakar’s arrival, her wicket of Beth Mooney was proof of how much she has improved in red-ball cricket with every spell. 

Mooney was adamant not to throw her wicket. She was blunting the spinners with ease and (despite being ridiculously lucky on a DRS dismissal given out on-field) was putting up a strong fight against whatever the Indian bowlers were throwing at her. But in the last over before lunch, Vastrakar came back and bowled a body line bouncer, which took Mooney’s gloves, and Rana didn’t miss the catch. 

An Indian fast bowler bouncing out an Aussie batter – that was a sight we don’t get to see often in women’s cricket! But here was Pooja Vastrakar, beating batters with movement and bounce!

Harmanpreet ran towards Vastrakar after that wicket, hugging her tightly. This was the growth in confidence she was talking about. She got to see the results of it in the very next Test. 

Apart from Perry and Mooney, Vastrakar also picked up the crucial wickets of Annabel Sutherland and Ashleigh Gardner, the former being pinned in front of the wickets after the ball came back in sharply. Meanwhile, Gardner got caught out by the keeper when she edged a ball from the same area that moved away. 

Throughout the innings, Vastrakar’s consistency on the good length proved extremely crucial as this was also the area from where she was generating seam movement both ways, making it hard for the batters to play their shots. Her economy rate of 2.2 on that length is proof of that. 

There’s no Test scheduled for the Indian women after this Test against Australia. But by improving so much as a bowler within such a short span of playing red ball cricket, Pooja Vastrakar is making a very strong case for more multi-day cricket, both at the domestic and international level.