India women’s team skipper Harmanpreet Kaur urges to play more Test cricket

India women’s team skipper Harmanpreet Kaur has expressed her desire to play more Test matches in the future. Harmanpreet is essentially indicative of the top-level women’s cricketer of her era in terms of the number of games she’s played in each of the three formats: three Tests, 127 ODIs, and 154 T20Is.

In the 2022-25 women’s Future Tours Programme (FTP) cycle, India is slated to play only two Test matches, both at home in the 2023-24 season, against England and Australia. During this cycle, only four sides will play Test cricket, with India playing the fewest, behind England (five), Australia (four), and South Africa (three).

Nowadays it’s a lot of fun playing T20s but Test cricket is something every cricketer wants to play: Harmanpreet Kaur

In an interview with Sky Sports Cricket Podcast, Kaur stated that she liked playing Test cricket and wished to play more of it. She stated that Test cricket tests the players’ talents and temperament while also helping them enhance their game in shorter forms. She said, “Nowadays it’s a lot of fun playing T20s but Test cricket is something every cricketer wants to play. This year we have two Tests – one against England and one against Australia – and I hope those games can make a huge impact on women’s cricket and hopefully in the future we will keep getting more Test matches. We have to bring back Test matches in women’s cricket because it’s very important for women’s cricket.”

She further added, “Trust me, [domestic cricket] has improved a lot,” she said. “Initially when I started playing, we hardly got domestic games but for the last couple of years, domestic level has improved a lot. We are getting more games and some domestic games are live also, people can watch on TV. “It is improving day by day but in my early days we used to play two- and three-day games which we are really missing, and I’m sure after these two Test matches hopefully we’ll get two-day matches back. The more cricket we get, the more improvement we’ll see in women’s cricket.”

Heather Knight, England’s captain, has stated her desire to play more Tests and proposed a points system for the women’s Ashes series that would provide equal weightage to all three formats.