Lord's out of uniform day
There was no gynocracy takeover, lightning did not strike MCC members for allowing this, and no Satanic wormholes opened up above the Pavilion either.
There is a uniform of Lord’s cricket fans. It’s so noticeable that when you are on the tube, you can spot them clearly. Beige chinos, maybe plum red if they’re a bit fun. Checked shirt, the odd gilet, straw hats (often white) and the bacon and egg uniform of the MCC itself. Throw in a food hamper, a copy of the Telegraph, and they look nothing like any other people on the Tube. Once you have identified them, you don’t need to look at the stations on the Jubilee line, you just wait for all the straw hats to rise, and you leave with them.
I’m not sure how many times this has happened in my career, but it must be around 100 trips to his ground. This is what travelling to Lord’s feels like for a Test.
But on the 10th of July, 2026, it didn’t. Looking around the tube, it was hard to work out who was going to jump out at St John’s Wood, and who was just off somewhere else.
There was almost no one in a traditional Lord’s uniform.
When the train stopped, the people who got up wore t-shirts and sandals. There was no Telegraph to be read, and the traditional hampers had been replaced by backpacks and handbags. Even before you got to the ground, it was clear this was not a normal Lord’s Test.
Those who disembarked also had a different pattern - it wasn’t just that the groups of men had been replaced by women. There were a lot of dads and daughters, and even grandfathers were with their granddaughters. It’s not that this is never seen in English cricket. But at Lord’s, for day one of a Test, it’s rare to see many kids - in part because of the incredibly high prices at the ground. Here there were kids everywhere.
A class gets off a bus, their hipster-looking teacher telling them to clap to prove they are paying attention. She has cool, rimmed sunglasses, short, spiky blond hair, and is wearing an Indian Test shirt. The kids wear, well, kids’ stuff. It shouldn’t feel shocking - many grounds around the world would have this. But not Lord’s. The only schoolkids they seem to like at this ground are those who went to Eton or Harrow. And this crew is not from there.
Lord’s has had one look for a very long time. Today is an out-of-uniform day.
***
The first session is played like two teams who haven’t been in a lot of Tests. England’s opening bowlers, the Laurens (Bell and Filer), are all over the shop with the red ball. Too full, too short, too wide, too straight. They both deliver filthy full tosses. At the same time, India is leaning into attacking them. They could just sit back and wait for the next ball down the leg side, but they are pressing forward to score instead.
At lunch, the score is 122/3. India are scoring very fast, but England are hanging in there because of the wickets.
No one can be surprised this was a little frantic - these teams don’t play Test cricket. Before the match, one net bowler (and media member), Enakshi Rajvanshi, said the Indian team were working on their leaves. They are playing Test cricket and learning how it works at the same time.
After the break, both teams find a different rhythm. England are line and length, drying up both ends with more ring fielders, while Smriti Mandhana and Harmanpreet Kaur are playing within themselves to soak up the pressure.
It took them both a session, but this is traditional Test cricket.
***
When I started my career, incels and hopeless husbands would frequently tell me that women didn’t like cricket, would never be any good at it, and it wouldn’t matter, because no one would watch. Men’s players would mock it, commentators would complain when they had to call games, and most writers just ignored it.
In 2012, I was at the World Cup for Cricinfo, and I told them I would be covering the men’s and women’s finals in the same way. A match would finish, and I would write a piece on it. The question was asked of why.
The answer was simple to me: cricket was cricket.
The Australian team didn’t take kindly to some of my more strident opinions. At that point, writing critically about women’s cricket just did not exist. But that was the problem.
Now there are specialists who only cover the women’s game. The money from TV rights and sponsorships is growing all the time. The WPL might be the biggest women’s league of any sport.
As long as women do anything, there will be people there telling them they can’t. But while everyone wanted to say this was historic, what it felt like was a celebration. It was hard to be at Lord’s today and not believe this was incredible for the game.
***
England are bowling wide of the stumps - even Sophie Ecclestone, who might be the person most likely to hit them in world cricket. It’s clear that this is a plan; they have been doing analysis on Jemimah Rodrigues and have realised she plays with her hands away from her body, especially when she cover drives.
England put out a deep point after a couple of stolen boundaries. But Rodrigues almost gets caught playing a loose drive. This encourages the home team more, and they also try the same method with the seamers. Before lunch, Rodrigues will drive with her hands away from her body, and she’ll drag on.
This is now a normal modern cricket thing. A player is worked out by video and data analysis, and the team executes the plan. But traditionally, women never saw their opponents until a game. They couldn’t follow them on TV, or even read up about them. They just magically appeared.
So things have changed.
But women’s cricket has only just got to a point where they have bowling boots designed for them. Until recently, they had to get them made themselves, or stuff men’s shoes at the side when they were too big for boys’ sizes. As far as I am aware, the first bat made for professional women’s cricket was in 2010.
This is a sport on one of the most rapid evolutionary curves we have ever seen. Rodrigues might have wished the analysis had slowed down for her part.
***
While shooting my documentary, Death of a Gentleman, we were at Lord’s filming, and I was also looking after my toddler son. We were running around getting some shots, and he was waddling around, setting off the pitch alarm. It was in the middle of winter, and freezing. Some of his fun had meant that his under clothes had become unbuttoned.
The only place that was open around me was the Long Room. I carried him in there to refasten everything so he didn’t freeze.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, a very upset MCC steward ran over to tell me off for changing a nappy in the Long Room. It was clear this was not a place made for families. It was for old men to wear their blazers.
Over the years, most people who have worked in cricket have been told off for something in the Long Room. Famous commentators have been denied entry, as have many celebrities.
More recently was the Lord’s members us showing their lack of knowledge of the laws of cricket (that their organisation still runs) while fighting with Australian cricketers for performing a legal stumping. The Long Room, even on a good day, is known as a stern tut-tutting kind of environment.
But not today. The England players are walking out to the ground, and they are being hugged by someone. The person doing the warm greetings is Anya Shrubsole, who won a World Cup final with a genius 6/46 spell here. And now she’s more like a proud aunty, smiling, laughing and importantly embracing the first women to walk out at Lord’s for a Test.
Sophie Ecclestone stops at times to wave at people she knows. This is Lord’s, it is still the Long Room, but it feels warmer. Less than three decades ago, there would have been no women in this room on most days.
In 1999, which is the year Ecclestone was born, and well into the childhood of some of England’s older players, women could not be members at Lord’s. Even the legendary Rachael Heyhoe Flint, who started cricket World Cups and was very much part of the establishment, was not invited.
In 1976, the first time the English Women’s team played here, there wasn’t even a thought they could be members of the MCC.
And today, those same women were not only here, but they rang the bell together.
Heyhoe Flint had to invent the World Cup, win it, and then wait just the 26 years to be one of the first women members here. She even had a gate here named after her, before a Test was played. Today, everything she and her fellow pioneers did, finally crossed the last hurdle.
Lord’s was, perhaps for the first time ever, an actual home of cricket.
***
Mady Villiers showed a perfect offspin delivery to bowl Harmanpreet Kaur through the gate. But she also bowled some loose ones, as all-rounders do.
Smriti Mandhana plays the ball on line rather than length. England bowled too wide or straight to her, and she destroyed them on both sides of the wicket.
Izzy Wong had trouble with the ball swinging; her first spell was a little sporadic because of it. Later she came on to hit the seam and she completely shut India down, before breaking the big partnership.
Deepti Sharma has made more runs sweeping in women’s Tests than any player on record. She knelt down on the slope as often as she could against the spinners.
India were probably under par. But of course, we could never know this because we have no records to speak of. But with three players getting fifties, and a big partnership in the middle, they should have been looking for 335+. But in being dismissed so early, it allowed England to bat at dusk, and take Tammy Beaumont’s wicket.
Both teams will be happy, and frustrated, in equal measure. In a way that only multi-day cricket can allow for.
***
Lord’s was opened in 1814, the first men’s Test was played in 1884. In 1976, the women played their first ODI. Middlesex Women first played on the slope in 2018 (or 2019 if you want it for a real match).
The Eton vs Harrow game has been played nearly 200 times at Lord’s.
And in 2026, just a mere 142 years after the first men’s Test here, and 92 years after the first women’s match anywhere, the women are allowed to wear whites on the slope.
Cricket is a conservative game, the MCC members are still fighting to keep their precious posh school game here. Yet, they never noticed the women didn’t play here.
***
There are three balls on the pitch. Deepti Sharma is practicing on the roped off corner of the field in front of the Allen Stand. It’s not something you see a lot in men’s cricket, but with the extra room, it clearly makes more sense to take her throwdowns here, and not go all the way out to the Nursery Ground as she is batting next.
All of this is done in front of the Gubby Allen Stand. Named after a man who was not really that popular in his time, and less so now. He also, allegedly, decided to hold the presentation in the Long Room at the end of play in the 1976 match, which meant none of the players’ friends or families could enter. How would he have reacted to women being members, and a Test at Lord’s, asked precisely no one at Lord’s today.
While warming up, Deepti misses one ball, and while she has a fielder out there working with her, he doesn’t see this one as he’s picking up another that she hit earlier. The ball slowly trickles behind her, and very gently hits the padded triangle, but with just enough force to roll up and down the slope, and then onto the playing surface.
There are no fans on that side of the ground, outside of the corporate boxes, and the security guards don’t see it either. So it’s clear that after this break for Harmanpreet Kaur’s injured arm, there will be two balls on the field at once.
Then Deepti misses another one - this one thrown quicker - and while the professional fielder hasn’t seen it either, a security guard does. He slowly makes his way over to the boundary as Izzy Wong is coming in to bowl.
But she delivers before he can pick up the two superfluous balls on the surface.
This was the only weird thing that happened today. The only moment where something happened that probably wouldn’t occur in a men’s Test. It was just cricket, with different chromosomes. There was no gynocracy takeover, sadly. Lightning did not strike MCC members for allowing this. And no Satanic wormholes opened up above the Pavilion.
Instead, what happened was more than a hundred years late: women playing a Test at Lord’s.