A fifth day is not the only way to make women’s red-ball cricket more exciting. Having more Tests, even if there are shorter ones, between more teams, and playing them on good surfaces can do just as much for the game.

The first women’s Test match to throw up a result in eight years. The most runs on aggregate in any women’s Test. Only the seventh time in 145 matches that all 40 wickets fell. Time enough for a double century, a century, and two 10-wicket hauls, including a spinner’s five-wicket burst on a deteriorating surface on the final day. Ebbs and flows in every session.

The Women’s Ashes series opener at Trent Bridge was a great advertisement for having a fifth day in women’s Tests.

This was only the second five-day Test match ever played by women. The first, in 1992, at the North Sydney Oval in Australia and England, had the whole of day three lost to rain.

Since the mid-1980s, women have usually played four-day Tests. Since 2010, they have played very little Test cricket at all, but when they do dust off their whites, there have been more draws than outright results.

Statisticians will caution against deducing causation from this correlation; but in recent years, players have been calling for a fifth day as an antidote to the draw. The thinking goes that a fifth day would have the best chance of forcing a result for an otherwise drab draw, or alternatively, if the draw was a dramatic one, an extra day would have meant there would have been time for that final push to win.

Australia winning a keen contest by 89 runs on the fifth morning, for the first result in the format since 2015, seems to prove supporters of the five-day Test were right all along.

As winning captain Alyssa Healy put it at the post-match interaction: “How good is it to have a result!”

“It just shows having five days in the Test match to actually get a result is super-important,” added off-spinning all-rounder Ash Gardner, picking up her player of the match award for her 12 wickets.

“I’ve been quite vocal about having five days and I think today, and the whole five days, actually, showed why that was,” said England captain Heather Knight, despite being on the wrong side of the result.

Having seen what a success five-day Tests can be, there is no reason to go back to a four-day version for the next Ashes.

However, that doesn’t mean all women’s Tests going forward must necessarily be five-day contests.

Outside of the Ashes every two years, only India and South Africa play Test cricket, and they too have embraced the red-ball game again only in the last couple of years. None of the other nations classified as Test-playing by the ICC organise women’s Tests anymore (or in the bewildering case of Afghanistan, any international women’s cricket at all).

So, the priority should be for more teams to play more multi-day cricket, whether that’s over three, four or five days.

But which should it be – three, four or five?

Economic compulsions and the vast financial disparities in the women’s game are likely to have the final say, if indeed more Test matches are to happen. But even if we were to debate just the merits of each, given the dismal sample size from the past decade, we simply don’t know enough to say which will work best.

Recent suggestions for five-day Tests have come from nations where women’s cricket is most professional and the participants are among the fittest. They are based on recent matches in England and Australia, which have been affected by rain or played on tired, used pitches. The Test matches have mostly been part of multi-format series, where the points table may determine if a team plays attacking or conservative Test cricket.

But we don’t know how much of this will hold true for Tests in the Caribbean or in Sri Lanka or in India. Or even when surfaces tailored for women’s red-ball cricket start being used.

The Trent Bridge Test might have been the longest ever in terms of days of play, but it’s nowhere near the top in terms of overs bowled. Not many of those long games finished in results either, showing that more time is not necessarily going to give a result.

Also, might a simple schedule tweak of having a reserve day for rain delays solve some of the issues with the existing four-day Tests?

In recent Tests, we have seen that run rates and strike rates are higher than ever before: The Trent Bridge Test was the first time when runs per hundred balls in the match was more than 60 (61.18 in this case). The run rate this decade from five matches is 3.20, up from 2.33 in 2010s.

But we still can’t say with any certainty how this trend affects results. Does it open the door for bowlers to take more wickets? Does it make for sporting declarations? Are matches getting more exciting anyway?

The five-day, 90-overs-a-day template is a relatively recent one in men’s Tests, too. There is little reason to implement that as a norm in women’s Tests, just when women’s cricket is deciding what it wants its Test cricket to look like. The idea of seam bowling shining on the first day, batting the next couple of days, before the slower bowlers have their say is anyway also being challenged.

Rather than making Tests five days in the hunt for entertainment and results, two other changes to the game may have a similar effect: more red-ball cricket, and better surfaces.

Tests end in results when bowling teams take wickets – preferably all 20 – in quick time. Giving bowlers sporting surfaces, the practice on how to bowl on them, and the fitness to keep doing so day after day will help them take those wickets.

Several recent women’s Tests have taken place on dull, used pitches. And as for the skill to send down long spells on them, none of those playing Tests currently have red-ball cricket at the first-class level. Currently, only Bangladesh have multi-day red-ball cricket on their domestic calendars: Three teams played two-day games starting this year.

Bowling strike-rates have been improving: They stand around 66 in recent Tests, as against being in the low 70s at the turn of the century. Encouraging a further improvement might be just the trick to having exciting Tests.

What was refreshing about the Trent Bridge Test was that the pressure was off from the women to manufacture a result. In recent four-day Tests, there has been an expectation for teams to be open to sporting declarations, just so there’s a chance for a result and entertainment for fans, even if it means risking a loss and the loss of points.

As Healy put it, “When you take the pressure off the captains and the teams to try and manipulate a result, it probably makes a little bit easier.”

The expectation to always play exciting cricket may not resolve any time soon. But the record audience at Trent Bridge shows that people are interested. It might need some trial and error, and plenty of flexibility, to give the fans the best of what women wielding the red ball can offer.