India A Women begin a four-day unofficial Test against Australia A Women on September 29 at the I.S. Bindra Punjab Cricket Association Stadium, Mohali, the only multi-day fixture on Australia A's short tour of India. Play starts at 9:30 AM IST and runs through October 2, with Yastika Bhatia captaining the hosts — the same batter who led Gujarat Giants' retained core in this week's WPL 2027 retentions and who scored a century the last time these two sides met in Mohali.
The match was originally scheduled for Dharamshala but was shifted to Mohali after prolonged rainfall left the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association ground's outfield unfit for a four-day fixture. The switch mirrors a theme that has run through Indian and Asian cricket all week — rain forcing schedule and venue changes across multiple tournaments simultaneously, from the washed-out Asian Games quarter-finals in Japan to this domestic relocation in Punjab.
Yastika Bhatia leads a squad of Anushka Sharma (vice-captain), Akshita Bhagat, Uma Chetry, Tejal Hasabnis, Jintimani Kalita, Amandeep Kaur, Minnu Mani, Niki Prasad, Priya Punia, Sayali Satghare, Shabnam Shakil, Tanisha Singh, Vaishnavi Sharma and Dinesh Vrinda — a squad drawing heavily from the domestic pool India selectors have been monitoring across this year's A-team fixtures, several of whom also feature in WPL squads.
Australia A Women, in India for a short white-ball-and-red-ball tour, field Darcie Brown, Nicole Faltum, Tess Flintoff, Sianna Ginger, Milly Illingworth, Charli Knott, Anika Learoyd, Katie Mack, Lilly Mills, Frankie Nicklin, Hayley Silver-Holmes, Rachel Trenaman, Tayla Vlaeminck, Courtney Webb and Tahlia Wilson. Brown and Vlaeminck give the tourists a genuine pace edge on a format where India's domestic pitches more often reward spin, setting up one of the clearer tactical contrasts of the four days.
These two sides last met at the same venue in a white-ball series that Australia A Women won in a last-over thriller, despite a Yastika Bhatia century. A four-day format changes the tactical demands considerably from that finish, rewarding patience and building partnerships over the boundary-hitting that decided the earlier contest, and it gives both squads their first extended red-ball assessment of the tour.
Unofficial A-team Tests rarely draw headline attention, but they matter for selection pipelines on both sides — India's selectors are watching this batch of India A Women players with the next WPL and international call-ups in mind, while Australia use these tours to assess depth beyond their full-strength squad. A strong showing from either side's fringe players carries weight well beyond this one fixture.
Day-by-day updates from Mohali are available on SportGod's live matches page, with more women's cricket coverage on SportGod's blog and AI-powered previews on SportGod's predictions page.
Squad lists, the venue change and match scheduling are verified against same-day and freshly re-checked reporting, current as of September 29, 2026.
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