Australia’s and England’s five-day Test is a triumph which must happen again

A n Australian win, a huge match haul of wickets, a turnaround from a day earlier – sure, all significant on the fifth day of the Women’s Ashes Test in Trent Bridge. Significant above all, though, were two words in that previous sentence: fifth day. Finally, a women’s Test was played over the full span that men’s matches enjoy, giving the space to the contest that allowed it to run its course.

Only once has a women’s match been scheduled over five days, for a standalone game in Sydney in 1992. On that occasion the entire third day was washed out, and Australia won by an innings so might well have wrapped it up in four had that not been the case. Even the anomalous five-match series of 1984‑85 had four-day matches. So if we get deeply technical, this was the first women’s Test with play on all five days – and it was a triumph.

Perhaps somebody should drop a note to Cricket Australia. Their next scheduled women’s Test, against South Africa in February, is still set for four days. The schedule for their December tour to India has of course not been released by the Board of Control for Cricket in India, but presumably that Test will be the same. Yet the next Ashes match in Australia will surely have to be five days given this one was, and at that point it won’t be defensible to have different rules for others. There really is no going back.

You could make an argument that this match could have been finished in four days with extended overs, given the fifth morning didn’t make it through the first session. Perhaps, but those overs on different days would have had different outcomes, and four days means more chance of losing bigger chunks of the game to rain, like the delay in Nottingham on the second day.

In any case, there