On Thursday, in a room in central London about three miles from Lord’s, a group of 10 women will gather together for a very special reunion. Fifty years ago, on 4 August 1976, they made history when they were among the first female cricketers to play a match at the so-called Home of Cricket: a one-day international between England and Australia.
- Pioneering players reunite at Lord's, welcomed by the Cricket Society, sharing memories and celebrating their role in women's cricket.
- Players recall awkward treatment by the MCC: attendants, separate routes, and plant pots in urinals, exposing gender barriers.
- Modern recognition: MCC honours pioneers as Nat Sciver-Brunt and Harmanpreet Kaur prepare for a landmark women's Test at Lord's.
England strolled to an eight-wicket win, chasing down 162 thanks to half-centuries from Enid Bakewell, opening up with Lynne Thomas, and Chris Watmough, coming in at No 3. But the importance of the occasion was less about the details of the match than what it represented. After almost five decades of the Women’s Cricket Association knocking on MCC’s door, the success of the first World Cup three years earlier finally persuaded the club that it was time to host a women’s match.
England’s No 5 that day, Megan Lear, compares it to the moon landing: “On that day in 1976, to walk on to the hallowed turf at Lord’s, it was like one small step for us women cricketers, but one giant leap towards the future of women’s cricket.”
Now, on the eve of the first women’s Test at the ground, nine of the survivors from England’s squad – plus one Australian – will reconvene to share their memories. The reunion is being organised by the Cricket Society, an organisation that celebrates the best of cricket past, present and future through its awards, publications and regular meetings featuring the great and the good of the sport.
This event, though, is unique. “England Women’s first match at Lord’s was a pivotal moment,” says the Cricket Society chair, Peter Hardy. “Enid Bakewell, Chris Watmough and Lynne Thomas deserved to be household names in 1976, but they were not. On 9 July we will acknowledge their wonderful contribution to the growth of women’s cricket, along with the other 19 players that day.”
Laughter and tears are expected in equal measure, as the assembled players remember absent friends – including England’s 1976 captain, Rachael Heyhoe Flint, who died in 2017 and will be represented by her son, Ben; and Jill Smart (nee Cruwys), who died in 1990. Many of the England players have not seen each other since a one-off dinner a decade ago in the Long Room at Lord’s – poignantly, one of the last public events organised by Heyhoe Flint before her death a few months later. Australia’s Karen Hill (nee Price) is flying 10,000 miles from Sydney to be present.
“That tour was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and gathering together 50 years later with others who shared it felt equally unique and important,” Hill says. “Cricket has played a large part in my life and has been instrumental in shaping me as a person – most of my closest friendships have come through the game. The cricket field was a place where I felt I belonged and where I have probably been the most confident in my life.”
Sussex’s Jan Southgate (nee Allen) is equally delighted that Hill will be in attendance: “I’ve got the scorecard here, and I’m just loving this one: ‘K Price, caught Hullah, bowled Allen.’ Caught at mid-on.” No doubt the scalp will be gleefully recounted on the day: these women may have been amateurs, but their competitive rivalry was never in question.
The reunion will be a chance to compare memories of some of the stranger details of the day. Back in 1976, MCC – still decades away from admitting women to membership – was clearly as unsure as the players how to handle the entry of females into a previously wholly male space. “I remember going into the back of the changing rooms to the toilets, and there were plant pots in the urinals,” Lear says. “Rachael looked at it and said: ‘Well they’re not going to last!’”
“They put a vase of flowers into the dressing room for us – I can’t imagine they do that very often,” Southgate says. “And we had two women attendants.
“But there were men stationed everywhere, in case we went into the wrong room in the pavilion. The whole day, we were so concerned. There was this big thing: ‘We have got this opportunity to play at Lord’s. We can’t mess up.’ Not the cricket, that was incidental. It was more the behaviour. We were very conscious to not do anything wrong. We knew that we were being watched so closely.
“We had to do our warm-up down at the Nursery End. And to get there, there’s no way we were allowed out on to the pitch. We had to go right round the concourse.”
Famously, the England team did not exit through the Long Room when coming out to field, concerned this would be a breach of etiquette. Instead, Heyhoe Flint led her team out of the side door and round the back of the pavilion, leaving the assembled MCC members slightly baffled. Later, England celebrated their victory with a bottle of champagne in the dressing room, drunk from the only receptacles provided – teacups.
It would be 11 years before MCC permitted another women’s match at Lord’s. “We said: ‘Let’s hope we can make this happen again,’” Southgate says. “But the big reason that was given about why we hadn’t played prior to this, and then after that, was because there were so many games at Lord’s. So they didn’t need any more to add to it.
“We were just so pleased to be there that we didn’t think: ‘This is crazy, why aren’t we being treated as the men would be?’”
Fifty years on, with England set to face India at Lord’s in the first women’s Test match there, starting on Friday, the experience of Nat Sciver-Brunt and Harmanpreet Kaur will thankfully be rather different to that of Heyhoe Flint & co. The game is set to break the UK women’s Test match attendance record (23,207, set at Trent Bridge in 2023), and MCC is pulling out all the stops to put on a show. “A Lord’s Test is such a pivotal moment,” says MCC’s chief marketing officer, Katie Maier. “On day one, we want it to have that proper goose bump feeling.”
To help make that happen, they are leaning in to the historic nature of the occasion. Sixty former England Women players have been invited to attend, and the pioneering role of the ’76 team is finally being acknowledged: they will be ringing the five-minute bell, and be welcomed with a guard of honour. One senses Heyhoe Flint would approve.
As to whether there will be plant pots in the urinals this time? Perhaps that’s one to ask Sciver-Brunt at close of play on day one (watch this space).
