England host India in a ladies’s Check on the iconic Lord’s Cricket Floor – the primary of such a form on the venue.
Printed On 9 Jul 2026
Lord’s will lastly host a ladies’s Check, 142 years since staging its first such males’s match, when England face India in a four-day sport on the “Residence of Cricket” beginning on Friday.
“It simply boggles my thoughts that it’s simply the primary (ladies’s) Check match right here at Lord’s,” stated India coach Amol Muzumdar.
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“It’s a nice event, and we’re trying ahead to it.”
The match takes place simply greater than 50 years because the first ladies’s match of any variety on the famend London venue, with England beating Australia by eight wickets in a one-day worldwide on August 4, 1976.
England’s captain at Lord’s that day was the late Rachael Heyhoe Flint, a pioneering determine in a ladies’s sport the place gamers had been nonetheless carrying skirts reasonably than white or colored trousers, as they do now.
Heyhoe Flint, who died in 2017, now has a gate named after her at Lord’s.
However in 1976, Marylebone Cricket Membership (MCC), the house owners of Lord’s, had been nonetheless a long time away from admitting ladies as members, with the considered females strolling straight by the Lengthy Room of the pavilion earlier than taking the sector a distant dream.
England’s No 5 that day, Megan Lear, in contrast the expertise to the moon touchdown, telling The Guardian: “On that day in 1976, to stroll on to the hallowed turf at Lord’s, it was like one small step for us ladies cricketers, however one large leap in the direction of the way forward for ladies’s cricket.”
It’s a signal of how issues have modified from these novice days {that a} Check between two skilled sides may also be England’s second fixture at Lord’s in lower than every week, following Sunday’s defeat by Australia within the women’s T20 World Cup final – a match that attracted a capability crowd.
9 of England’s World Cup squad are included for the Check, together with captain Nat Sciver-Brunt, who’s “hoping to play” regardless of a nagging calf damage.
‘Historical past within the making’
“We’ve at all times recognized this has been on the calendar,” stated England coach Charlotte Edwards.
“Lots of our gamers have been doing Check match prep all through the T20s, so we’re actually trying ahead to it,” added Edwards, England’s captain after they gained the 2009 Ladies’s T20 World Cup closing at Lord’s.
“It’s a historic Check match for us as a gaggle and for the Indian crew, and we are able to’t wait to play in entrance of lots of people once more over the following 4 days.”
Teenage England spinner Tilly Corteen-Colman is nicely conscious of the significance of the event.
“I keep in mind chatting with Lottie (Edwards) about when she used to play right here and so they weren’t allowed within the Lengthy Room,” stated the 18-year-old.
“The primary ladies’s Check at Lord’s is historical past within the making, so to be concerned can be unbelievable. It might imply absolutely the world.”
In addition to a breakthrough, the sport may also mark England batter Tammy Beaumont’s farewell to worldwide cricket.
Beaumont has made 260 appearances for England since her debut 17 years in the past, and she or he was the primary English lady to attain a double century in a Check – 208 in opposition to Australia at Trent Bridge in 2023.
“After I fell in love with enjoying cricket as a younger woman, I barely knew that enjoying cricket for England was an choice,” stated Beaumont.
The 35-year-old, who will proceed to play home cricket, added: “Our first ever ladies’s Check at Lord’s seems like the right event to log out on a profession that I may by no means have dreamt can be as particular because it has been.”
