London
\nLord\u2019s will finally host a women\u2019s Test, 142 years since staging its first such men\u2019s match, when England face India in a four-day game at the \u2018Home of Cricket\u2019 starting Friday.
\n\u201cIt just boggles my mind that it is just the first (women\u2019s) Test match here at Lord\u2019s,\u201d said India coach Amol Muzumdar, who added: \u201cIt is a great occasion and we are looking forward to it.\u201d
\nThe match takes place just over 50 years since the first women\u2019s match of any kind at the renowned London venue, with England beating Australia by eight wickets in a one-day international on August 4, 1976.
\nEngland\u2019s captain at Lord\u2019s that day was the late Rachael Heyhoe Flint, a pioneering figure in a women\u2019s game where players were still wearing skirts rather than, as they do no now, white or coloured trousers.
\nHeyhoe Flint, who died in 2017, now has a gate named after her at Lord\u2019s.
\nBut in 1976, Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the owners of Lord\u2019s, were still decades away from admitting women as members, with the thought of females walking directly through the Long Room of the pavilion before taking the field a distant dream.
\nEngland\u2019s No 5 that day, Megan Lear, compared the experience to the moon landing, telling the Guardian: \u201cOn that day in 1976, to walk on to the hallowed turf at Lord\u2019s, it was like one small step for us women cricketers, but one giant leap towards the future of women\u2019s cricket.\u201d
\nIt is a sign of how things have changed from those amateur days that a Test between two professional sides will also be England\u2019s second fixture at Lord\u2019s in under a week following Sunday\u2019s defeat by Australia in the women\u2019s T20 World Cup final\u2014 a match that attracted a capacity crowd.
\nNine of England\u2019s World Cup squad are included for the Test, including captain Nat Sciver-Brunt, who is \u201choping to play\u201d despite a nagging calf injury.
\n\u2018History in the making\u2019
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve always known this has been on the calendar,\u201d said England coach Charlotte Edwards.
\n\u201cA lot of our players have been doing Test match prep throughout the T20s so we\u2019re really looking forward to it,\u201d added Edwards, England\u2019s captain when they won the 2009 Women\u2019s T20 World Cup final at Lord\u2019s.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s a historic Test match for us as a group and for the Indian team, and we can\u2019t wait to play in front of a lot of people again over the next four days\u201d
\nTeenage England spinner Tilly Corteen-Colman is well aware of the importance of the occasion.
\n\u201cI remember speaking to Lottie (Edwards) about when she used to play here and they weren\u2019t allowed in the Long Room,\u201d said the 18-year-old.
\n\u201cThe first women\u2019s Test at Lord\u2019s is history in the making, so to be involved would be incredible. It would mean the absolute world.\u201d
\nAs well as a breakthrough, the game will also mark England batter Tammy Beaumont\u2019s farewell to international cricket.
\nBeaumont has made 260 appearances for England since her debut 17 years ago and she was the first English woman to score a double century in a Test \u2014 208 against Australia at Trent Bridge in 2023.
\n\u201cWhen I fell in love with playing cricket as a young girl, I barely knew that playing cricket for England was an option,\u201d said Beaumont.
\nTh 35-year-old, who will continue to play domestic cricket, added: \u201cOur first ever women\u2019s Test at Lord\u2019s feels like the perfect occasion to sign off on a career that I could never have dreamt would be as special as it has been.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
London Lord\u2019s will finally host a women\u2019s Test, 142 years since staging its first such men\u2019s match, when England face India in a four-day game at the \u2018Home of Cricket\u2019 starting Friday. \u201cIt just boggles my mind that it is just the first (women\u2019s) Test match here at Lord\u2019s,\u201d said India coach Amol Muzumdar, who …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":100049,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100080"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100080\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100091,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100080\/revisions\/100091"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}