Sophia Dunkley To Be The First Black Woman In History To Play Test Cricket For England

Sophia Dunkley, a woman of colour, is going to play with the Women's cricket team of England in the one-off Test against India. She received her maiden test cap on Wednesday. She will therefore be the first black woman in the history of England's women cricket team to play a test match.

The 22-year-old cricketer, Sophia Dunkley, played domestic cricket for the South East Stars. She has participated in 15 T20 matches so far. Dunkley is an all-rounder and received the cap from her team-mate Georgia Elwiss. Heather Knight is the captain of the team.

Georgia Elwiss while handing out the cap read some words written by Ebony Rainford-Brent MBE – the first Black woman to play white-ball cricket for England. Elwiss said, "Obviously playing Test cricket is a very rare occurrence in the women’s game so I think it’s exciting that people want to see women’s Test cricket."

As reported by the PA news agency, she further added, "It’s a really exciting direction. I know quite a lot of the girls have not played a lot of Test cricket, but to have the opportunity to play the historic game of cricket, it’s very, very exciting."

Meanwhile, there are five debutants playing from the Indian women's cricket team's side Shafali Verma, Deepti Sharma, Sneh Rana, Taniya Bhatia and Pooja Vastrakar. Indian Women got rid of Lauren Winfield-Hill (35) after toiling hard as England Women reached a solid 86 for one at lunch on the opening day of the one-off Test here on Wednesday.

Tammy Beaumont was on the strike along with Heather Knight with the partnership being at 48 till the break. Jhulan Goswami and Shikha Pandey, the Indian pacing duo made sure to obstruct the batswoman at the start of the game. Goswami induced an edge from Winfield-Hill in the 7th over but Smriti Mandhana dropped the chance.