Somehow, despite MCC’s historical antipathy to women’s cricket, Lord’s always seems to be a ground where female cricketers make history. England Women have three times won a World Cup here, in 1993, 2009 and 2017. In 1998, the Harris Garden was their site of choice when, after 64 years of England-Australia contests, the women finally created some “ashes” of their own, in a unique and slightly bizarre ceremony involving the burning of a miniature bat in a wok (handily provided by the MCC kitchen).
Fitting, then, that as the Women’s Ashes series finally returned on Saturday evening for the first time in 10 years, and on a day when the MCC president, Stephen Fry, unveiled a plaque to commemorate the trophy’s creation, it was Lord’s that bore witness to an English victory in front of an historic crowd of 21,610 – smashing the record for a bilateral women’s international in England.
