As Sourav Ganguly and his men prepare for their tour to the West Indies, two of India's representative teams are in the thick of things in South Africa. Over the weekend, the women's team and the India A men's team returned contrasting results from their fixtures: Anjum Chopra's women registered India's first-ever overseas Test victory when they thumped South Africa by ten wickets at Paarl on Saturday. A day later, across the country at Chatsworth, Jacob Martin's India A team suffered an innings defeat at the hands of South Africa Board President's XI. India A had started on a fair enough note when they put on 212 runs against an Andre Nel-led bowling line-up in the first of their four first-class matches. But it was nothing to President's 411 in just 110 overs; Rakesh Patel, on the fringe of the first team for a while now, was whipped for 129 runs from 27 overs. Captain Gerald Dros was the chief scorer with 117 not out, while Loots Bosman and Kruger van Kwyk chipped in with fifties. Amit Mishra, a 19-year-old legspinner from Delhi, ended with 5 for 115.

Needing 200 to save an innings defeat, India A crashed to 90 all out in less than what constituted a session-and-a-half of play. Rohan Gavaskar, the son of Sunil, had made 43 in the first innings but managed only 13 in the second. Relatively, it wasn't too bad: only Martin, with 25, got more. Left-arm spinner Robin Peterson ended with the remarkable figures of 7.2-4-9-4.

The Indian women, on the other hand, were utterly dominant in their match. Six batters - led from the front by Chopra's 80 - got 40 or more in their first-innings total of 404. Then, they bowled out South Africa for 150, enforced the follow-on, and bowled them out again for 262. The target of 13 was met easily to clinch an unassailable 1-0 lead in the two-Test series.

A little before they left for South Africa, Chopra had said – sniggered actually – on a television show that her team were certainly "doing much better than the men." QED.

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