 "The redeveloped WACA Ground in Perth witnessed plenty of tributes for the retiring Alyssa Healy on the opening day of the one-off Test between Australia and India. Image credit: Radha Lath Gupta")
Perth, Australia: Everything at the WACA on Friday afternoon seemed arranged around one person: Alyssa Healy.
The newly done-up ground felt cheerful – especially the grass bank with a temporary new name: Healy Hill, for her farewell Test. Scattered through the stands were 77 jerseys and home-made tributes, including a T-shirt I saw that read, “I’m Healy going to miss you.” It was very clear what the theme of the day was meant to be: Celebrate a legend, enjoy a rare women’s day-night Test, and hope the cricket matched the occasion.
India were asked to bat, and in the first session Australia ensure no freebies were given. Mandhana was cleaned up by 19-year-old Lucy Hamilton on her debut – the kind of early strike any young quick would dream about – and from there, wickets fell just often enough to stop India from accelerating properly.
WACA’s scoreboard and its commanding presence
A lap around the ground confirmed the redevelopment has got one thing right: from pretty much anywhere, you get a decent view of the cricket. Up at one end, the old manual scoreboard still commanded a presence. The gentleman next to me, a regular at women’s games, handed over his binoculars and told me to point them there. Through the lenses, you could see three or four people hauling numbers up and down, slotting names into place. It felt almost old-fashioned in the middle of this new build, like the ground had kept one visible reminder of how long cricket has been played here.
Out in the middle, Jemimah Rodrigues was doing what she often does: making something out of not very much. While batters came and went around her, she dug in, picked gaps, kept resetting. When she eventually reached fifty, there was a generous round of applause, notably too from Australians who had spent most of the morning cheering Hamilton and Annabel Sutherland.
Alana King got her own pockets of noise too. Every time the Perth Scorchers leggie ran down to fine leg, the cheers kicked up a notch. When she finally came on to bowl, her first four deliveries went for a boundary, reiterating how wonderful and humbling Test cricket truly is.
Quick Reads
View AllIndia’s eventual total – 198 all out – felt light, but not lifeless. There were enough little acts of resistance for the day to have a shape such as Kashvee Gautam’s 30-odd at the end, on debut. It was also when things off the field started to nag at me.
An Indian cricketer wearing a taped up jersey?
When Kashvee walked out, I reached again for the binoculars, this time just to see her stance a little more clearly. Instead, my eyes went straight to her back. There was no name. Under a strip of white tape, you could clearly make out DEOL – Harleen’s shirt, repurposed at the last minute. Regardless of replacement status, there is no good excuse for an international player to be in a taped-up jersey.
And it didn’t stop there. When India came out to bowl under lights, some of them were in their blue limited-overs caps, a couple had floppy hats and most were capless. In a format where the Test cap is a symbol of pride – and in a country where the ‘Baggy Green’ is almost its own personality – India’s women were out there in whatever headgear they already owned.
A few days ago in Perth, the Indian women’s football team kicked off an Asian Cup in sponsor-less kits hurriedly sourced after a mess with ill-fitting jerseys. Now the cricketers were in borrowed whites and non-Test caps. Different sport, same basic question: why are the simplest things still so hard to get right?
By about 5.45 pm, the lights switched on and drew a happy little cheer. The sky softened, the pink ball began to glow as India tried to make 198 look like something they could work with.
They did manage to pry the game open. Sayali Satghare, on debut, ducked one back in sharply to bowl Georgia Voll. Later, Phoebe Litchfield sliced one towards backward point and Rodrigues threw herself forward to pull off a blinder. When Alyssa Healy walked out, the noise lifted automatically; when she edged to Rodrigues for 13, it turned into a long, affectionate standing ovation as she walked back to the dugout.
‘Actually watching the game and the players’
Somewhere in there, both teams torched two DRS reviews each, and everyone in our stand kept craning their necks towards the sole big screen for confirmation. The gentleman next to me said he liked women’s cricket because people here “are actually watching the game and the players, not just the spectacle.” He was right. You could hear it in the way the crowd reacted – to Jemimah’s fifty, to Healy’s farewell, to every small contest in the middle.
In the stands were families, couples, clusters of kids and, in one section, a travelling trio: Janaya, her mum Bernadette, and grandmother Ann - three generations who had flown in from Sydney just to watch women’s cricket together. “I am really glad that we’ve got to see both teams bat on day one,” Bernadette said. “There have been moments where it’s gone to and fro, but I am very excited for tomorrow.”
As Kashvee ran in for her last spell of the evening, the tape on her back was starting to peel at the edges, fluttering a little as she hit the crease. Despite that, it was, undeniably, a very good day of cricket: A redeveloped ground showing itself off, a legend being celebrated and debutants from both teams making marks.
Australia have the upper hand after Day 1 in Perth. India, as usual, have the harder road. But with three more days to go, this Test – like the ground it’s being played on – feels like something worth building on.