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Flexibility is key for promoting women’s Test cricket, both Australia and England’s captains agree.
While the sides’ recent draw was met with rave reviews as potentially the greatest women’s Test ever, it also renewed calls for matches to be extended to five days.
But Australia captain Meg Lanning said four-day matches were long enough, provided they were played on top-quality wickets.
She said the ability to trigger extra time should weather interfere with matches could also help find the right balance.
” I do think (four days) is enough … it does promote good scoring rates,” she said.
“The difficult part is the last few Test matches, weather has played a big role.
“Whether you get to a point with the weather where if you lose a certain amount of time, trigger a fifth day or something like that.
“We’ve seen a lot of these players within the side have played a few Tests now, and they’ve started to get the hang of it and understand a bit more.”
England skipper Heather Knight said if it meant more nations would take to the Test arena, flexibility to choose between four or five days was appropriate.
“Boards should have the choice to decide … if you want to play five days in an Ashes Test match, where the result is a little bit more important then definitely,” she said.
“But if countries want to play Test cricket and the only option is four (days) then absolutely, that should be the case. What this Test match shows is if you get the right wicket it makes such a big difference.”
The captains were speaking ahead of Thursday’s first of three one-day matches for the Ashes, with England needing to win all three to claim the trophy.
After the heartbreaking draw, Knight said her troops must take positives from the day-four fight where they made 9-245 in 48 overs.
“Not a huge amount was said after the game actually … there was quite a lot of emotion flying around,” she said.
“It’s quite important for us to try and park it. I’ve certainly learned in my career that if you don’t park a game like that it can be quite detrimental.
“We felt like we were in a great position to win … we’ve shown that we can fight back and when we do put them under pressure we can really create a few cracks.”
And Lanning said her side was ready to attack the challenge at full speed, despite being in such a commanding position to retain the Ashes.
“We want a contest, we want really competitive cricket and that’s what it’s been throughout the series so far, and we’re expecting much of the same tomorrow,” she said.
“We understand there’s going to be a difficult challenge against a side who has shown particularly over the last couple of weeks how good they can be.”
The one-day series starts at Canberra’s Manuka Oval on Thursday before heading to Melbourne for games on Sunday and Tuesday.
© AAP
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