On Thursday, a group of 10 women will gather in central London for a special reunion marking 50 years since they made history at Lord’s. On 4 August 1976, they were among the first female cricketers to play at the Home of Cricket in a one-day international between England and Australia.
Historic Match Details
England won by eight wickets, chasing 162 with half-centuries from Enid Bakewell, Lynne Thomas, and Chris Watmough. The match’s significance lay not in the result but in its symbolism: after almost five decades of lobbying by the Women’s Cricket Association, MCC finally agreed to host a women’s game following the success of the first World Cup in 1973.
Megan Lear, England’s No 5 that day, compared the occasion 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.”
Reunion Organised by Cricket Society
The reunion, organised by the Cricket Society, will bring together nine surviving England players and one Australian, Karen Hill (nee Price), who is flying 10,000 miles from Sydney. Peter Hardy, chair of the Cricket Society, said: “England Women’s first match at Lord’s was a pivotal moment. 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 as the players remember absent friends, including England 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.
Memories of a Unique Day
Hill said: “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. Cricket has played a large part in my life and has been instrumental in shaping me as a person.”
Players recalled strange details: plant pots in the urinals, a vase of flowers in the dressing room, and male attendants stationed to prevent them from entering wrong rooms. Lear said: “Rachael looked at it and said: ‘Well they’re not going to last!’” England’s Jan Southgate (nee Allen) added: “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.”
The team famously avoided the Long Room when taking the field, exiting via a side door to avoid breaching etiquette. They celebrated their victory with champagne drunk from teacups.
Legacy and Modern Recognition
It would be 11 years before MCC permitted another women’s match at Lord’s. Southgate said: “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?’”
Now, on the eve of the first women’s Test at Lord’s between England and India, the experience will be markedly different. The game is set to break the UK women’s Test attendance record of 23,207 set in 2023. MCC’s chief marketing officer, Katie Maier, said: “A Lord’s Test is such a pivotal moment. On day one, we want it to have that proper goose bump feeling.”
Sixty former England Women players have been invited, and the 1976 team will ring the five-minute bell and be welcomed with a guard of honour.
