Seamer Pooja Vastrakar and off-spinner Sneh Rana were crafty enough to exploit a pitch offering variable bounce to bundle Australia out for 219 in their first innings on the opening day of the one-off Test at the Wankhede in Mumbai.

India, in their first essay, raced to 98/1 at stumps on Thursday as openers Smriti Mandhana (43 batting) and Shafali Verma (40) added 90 runs at the top.

India’s march to ascendancy began through Vastrakar (4/53) who teamed up with Rana (3/56) and Deepti Sharma (2/45) to snap Australia’s first innings in 77.4 overs despite a half-century from Tahlia McGrath. The visitors
lost opener Phoebe Litchfield in the first over itself after a mix-up with Beth Mooney.

Four deliveries later, Vastrakar produced a jaffa to remove Ellyse Perry and reduced Australia to 7/2 inside the first two overs. She beat the defence of the star all-rounder by getting the ball to tail in to disturb the stumps.

“With Perry coming in, I wanted to bring the ball back in sharply and I was able to execute it properly,” Vastrakar said later.

“I have the natural outswinger, but while watching the videos of both these teams (Australia and England), I saw they had some difficulty in facing the deliveries that jag back in. We practised during training to get the ball to move in with the wobbly seam. The ball cuts well with the wobbly seam and batters face difficulties.”

McGrath (50) came out firing on all cylinders to try and put pressure back on India. She was severe on anything that had width, racing to her third fifty in five Tests.

But she found hardly any support from others, barring a little bit from captain Alyssa Healy (38).