Fifty years ago, on 4 August 1976, ten women cricketers made history by playing the first women's match at Lord's, the Home of Cricket. On Thursday, nine England players and one Australian from that team will reunite in central London to share memories on the eve of the first women's Test at the ground.
Historic match details
England won the one-day international by eight wickets, chasing down 162 with half-centuries from Enid Bakewell and Chris Watmough. But the match's significance far outweighed the result. After nearly five decades of the Women's Cricket Association lobbying the MCC, the success of the first Women's World Cup three years earlier finally persuaded the club to host a women's game.
England's No 5, Megan Lear, compared the occasion to the moon landing: "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 is being organised by the Cricket Society. Chair Peter Hardy 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 (née Cruwys), who died in 1990.
Australian participant flies 10,000 miles
Australia's Karen Hill (née Price) is flying 10,000 miles from Sydney to attend. She 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 – most of my closest friendships have come through the game."
Hill added: "Life is also short. We have already lost a number of our peers from that era and, with the encouragement of friends and family, I decided this was an opportunity that simply should not be missed."
Strange details of the day recalled
The players remember peculiar aspects of the 1976 match. The MCC, still decades away from admitting women members, was unsure how to handle the occasion. Lear recalled: "I remember going into the back of the changing rooms to the toilets and there were plant pots in the urinals. Rachael looked at it and said: 'Well they're not going to last.'"
Sussex's Jan Southgate (née Allen) added: "They put a vase of flowers into the dressing room for us – I can't imagine they do that very often. And we had two women attendants. But there were men stationed everywhere, in case we went into the wrong room in the pavilion."
The England team did not exit through the Long Room when coming out to field, concerned it would be a breach of etiquette. Instead, Heyhoe Flint led them out of a side door and round the back of the pavilion. They celebrated their victory with champagne drunk from teacups.
Progress 50 years on
It was 11 years before the 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, as England face India in the first women's Test at Lord's on Friday, the experience will be very different. The game is set to break the UK women's Test attendance record (23,207 at Trent Bridge in 2023). The MCC is putting on a show, with 60 former England Women players invited, the 1976 team ringing the five-minute bell and receiving a guard of honour. MCC 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 goosebump feeling."
