(Reuters) – India women set a new record on Friday in the first day of their one-off test against South Africa, scoring 525 runs for four wickets, the highest total any team has amassed in a single day of Test cricket.
The total includes fastest double hundred by opener Shafali Verma while her partner Smriti Mandhana contributed with a century at the M.A. Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai. The 354 runs scored by both are also the most by openers in an innings in women’s Tests.
Shafali scored the double century off just 194 balls. The 20-year-old surpassed Annabel Sutherland’s earlier performance this year, where the Australian scored a century off 248 balls against the Proteas.
The previous record for the most runs scored in a single day was set by England’s Betty Snowball, who amassed 189 runs on the opening day of a test match against New Zealand in 1935.
Shafali is the second Indian woman as well as the second youngest woman to record a double-century in test matches, following India’s Mithali Raj who was 19 when she scored 214 runs against England in Taunton in 2002.
(Reporting by Shifa Jahan in Kolkata; Editing by Himani Sarkar)
