Cricket's lesser spotted test comes to Bloemfontein

Laura Wolvaardt isn't alone in considering her cover drive her favourite stroke. Millions of cricketminded people around the world would concur. But they don't have to remember not to play it.

"My cover drive is my favourite shot, and now it's the one shot I'm not allowed to play early on with all those slips behind me," Wolvaardt told a press conference in Bloemfontein on Saturday.

On Sunday, she will lead South Africa against England in the first women's Test in this country in more than 22 years. Wolvaardt has played 184 internationals, but only three of them have been Tests.

From her first match for Western Province under-19s in December 2011, Wolvaardt has played 426 games of cricket. None of them, besides her Tests, has been a first-class fixture because domestic red-ball cricket for women does not exist in South Africa.

Nor in England. Wolvaardt's counterpart, Heather Knight, has played a dozen Tests. But those are also her only first-class caps. As recently as Wednesday, Wolvaardt and Knight were captaining their teams in the last of the six white-ball games they have played against each other in the past three weeks. Now they will have to slow down their approach but intensify their thinking.

"It's tough, especially only having two days of training since the last ODI," Wolvaardt said. "You don't really want to be training for a Test in the middle of a T20 series. We left it for right before the Test. So balls that I was cover driving a week ago I now need to leave, which has been tricky in the nets.

"It's more of a mental thing. I think there's only so much technical stuff you can learn in two days. But for each player to try to make a basic gameplan with the bat is important. That's hard, because batting is a reaction. You have less than a second to react to the ball, and you train to get those reactions the way you want them. But to not unload those reactions in a day or two is difficult. It's something that would take a lot of time to train for."

Was it unfair to expect women to turn themselves into Test players in two days?

"It is weird that my only three first-class matches have been for South Africa, with no red-ball prep throughout my junior career. Men have a full red-ball career before they finally make their debut for the Proteas in the format. So it's backwards. But that's the situation we find ourselves in, and I'm definitely going to grab the opportunity to play a Test when it's there.

"It's the purest form of the game and to be able to play it is always such an awesome opportunity. I'm going to enjoy every second of the game. I'd love to have way more of it in the calendar, but unfortunately we don't get to play that often."

Knight concurred: "I absolutely love playing red-ball cricket. Some of my favourite memories have been in red-ball cricket. It's such a test, such a challenge. The mental challenge of it, the repetition of skill, the adapting to so many different situations that you might face.

"I'd love to see some domestic red-ball stuff, whether that be North versus South games, as they've had in England previously, to allow players to develop. In the build-up to the Test, everyone's like, right, how do I learn, how do I develop, how do I apply my game to this situation?

"It's a really good basis to grow as cricketers. Repetition of skill is important in all formats, and playing more red-ball can, at a younger age, enable you to repeat more of your skills in the white-ball format.

"It always comes up, doesn't it, the future of women's Test cricket; should we play it, should we not? All I can say is I love playing it. It's a really pure format of the game, but I can see the reasons why T20 has been prioritised in the women's game. That's been the growth area, that's been how the game's moved forward."

The English differ from their opponents in how they have readied themselves for the challenge of playing a Test, as Knight explained: "We've tried to incorporate the odd red-ball session to practise the skills, but also just to practise flipping into that mindset of red-ball cricket and then flipping back into white-ball. That's the biggest challenge, being able to flip between the formats; being okay sometimes with not scoring and having to soak up pressure for longer."

Even though she has played three times as many Tests as Wolvaardt, Knight still thought of herself as a beginner in the format: "I've been playing for [England for] 14 years, and this is my 13th Test. I'm still a novice at Test cricket, really. You look at someone who's played that many in the men's game and you'd say they're at the start of their career and learning and developing."

You would. And you wouldn't know if they were going to have anything like Wolvaardt's supremely sublime cover drive or Knight's superb leadership skills. Happily, playing Tests isn't cricket's only path to greatness.