DY Patil Stadium: Medium pacer Pooja Vastrakar was the star for India on the opening day of the only Test of the all-format series against Australia Women as she claimed 4-53 to help the hosts bundle out the visitors for a paltry 219 at the Wankhede Stadium on Thursday.What made the difference for Vastrakar was the in-swinger that she had developed ahead of the two Test matches against England and Australia, after watching videos of the two teams.
“Naturally, I have out-swing but while watching the videos of both these teams, (we noticed that) they face some difficulty in facing incoming deliveries. We practiced during the training to try and get the ball moving in with the wobble seam since the ball cuts well with the wobble seam and batters face difficulty,” Vastrakar said in the post-day press conference at the Wankhede Stadium here on Thursday.
Her performance was all the more creditable because Vastrakar, who had claimed her best figures of 3-23 in the second innings of last week’s one-off Test against England at the DY Patil Stadium, was bowling only in her second match with the SG red-ball.
The 24-year-old pacer made her debut against England in 2021 and also played the pink-ball Test against Australia at Carrara the same year and was thus bowling with the SG red-ball for the first time.
She said that controlling the red-ball is difficult but the team management made them bowl specific overs daily in the buildup to help them prepare for the two Tests.
“It is difficult to control the movement of the red ball. When we were playing domestic T20s the bowling coach and the trainers had defined our workloads. We were not bowling just four overs, we were given targets like we had to bowl 24 overs in a week and 32 in the next. We had to count the balls (bowled) and send them the data, which is why when we reached Bangalore (for the camp), we did not face many difficulties with the red ball. Also, playing a four-day practice match helped us,” said the 24-year-old pacer from Bilaspur in Madhya Pradesh.
Vastrakar credited the Indian women’s team’s bowling coach Troy Cooley and said she got a lot of help from him.
“Got a lot of help with him coming in, he is a very positive person and even when we have not done well he talks about the better deliveries that we had bowled in that session,” said Vastrakar.
The pacer described the wicket of Ellyse Perry as satisfactory. “With Perry coming in, I wanted to bring the ball back in sharply and I was able to execute it properly,” she said of the delivery that jagged in from a length and sneaked through the gap between bat and pad.
She said bowling on the Wankhede wicket was difficult as the pacers had to work hard to get some assistance.
“It did not appear to be an easy wicket like at DY Patil (Stadium) when we trained, we felt we would have to work hard here and hit the surface (hard) while bowling. The bowling coach told both seamers that we would have to bowl wicket-to-wicket hit the deck and try to get the ball coming back in. The first delivery I bowled to Perry was an in-swing and she got out,” she said.
