{"id":791116,"date":"2026-07-10T09:58:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T09:58:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/791116\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T09:58:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T09:58:20","slug":"cricket-legend-belinda-clark-becomes-the-first-australian-woman-to-have-her-portrait-displayed-in-the-long-room-at-lords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/791116\/","title":{"rendered":"Cricket legend Belinda Clark becomes the first Australian woman to have her portrait displayed in the Long Room at Lord\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The first time Belinda Clark walked through the Long Room at Lord\u2019s as a player she had an acute sense that this was not a privilege afforded to many women.<\/p>\n

While everyone at the ground made Clark and her 1998 Australian cricket team feel welcome, women were not admitted as members of Marylebone Cricket Club until a few months later.<\/p>\n

\"AA portrait of Australian cricket legend Belinda Clark, by Melbourne artist Andrew Greensmith, is unveiled in the Long Room at Lord\u2019s, near paintings of Sachin Tendulkar and Sir Donald Bradman.Marylebone Cricket Club<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was obviously a place that was a male bastion,\u201d Clark recalled, \u201cand the people in this room watching you walk out to bat were predominantly males.\u201d<\/p>\n

Had Clark looked up at the walls she would have seen more male faces looking down at her.<\/p>\n

On Friday, she became the first Australian woman to grace those walls when a portrait of her was unveiled in the prestigious Long Room and hoisted near paintings of Sir Donald Bradman and Sachin Tendulkar.<\/p>\n

Only a handful of portraits of women have made it into the Long Room, including former England captains Rachael Heyhoe Flint and Charlotte Edwards.<\/p>\n

\"ClarkClark in action at Lord\u2019s in 1998, where Australian swept the series against England.Getty Images<\/p>\n

Unlike Edwards, who is depicted on the Lord\u2019s balcony in full England kit, Clark is not painted in a cricket setting at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe obvious thing is to paint someone in the uniform and their green cap, or in action, and I push away from that sort of thing. It\u2019s about her as a person in all spheres of life,\u201d explained Melbourne artist Andrew Greensmith.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe doesn\u2019t push that [she was] a cricketer at all, and I think that is a true reflection of her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Greensmith tried to convey Clark\u2019s essential qualities.<\/p>\n

\"ClarkClark with Melbourne artist Andrew Greensmith, who was commissioned by the Marylebone Cricket Club to paint her portrait.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s quiet, but strong and proud and hopeful for the future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s quite casual, and I put her in a not perfectly ironed shirt. I wanted to just show that pride, and leadership \u2026 You can just tell she would have been a great leader for a team.\u201d <\/p>\n

Clark, 55, is dual World Cup-winning captain and batting great who paved a path for the likes of Meg Lanning<\/a> and Alyssa Healy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Her world record for the highest score of 229 not out in a women\u2019s one-day international stood for two decades, and for much of that time had not been surpassed by a man, either.<\/p>\n

\"AA portrait of Shane Warne was added to the Long Room gallery in 2005.Getty Images <\/p>\n

She was thrilled with the painting, and how the bursts of light in it capture her essential optimism.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, I thought, Andrew, did you have to paint all the lines on my face? Then I laughed at myself, and I thought, well, that\u2019s me, that looks like me.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s showing this dark and light shadow, and that\u2019s really what life\u2019s about. There\u2019s great moments, and there\u2019s moments that are not so great, and you\u2019ve got to find a way through that. I look at it and I see these bursts of light. I just think, wow, how has he done that with a paintbrush? I\u2019ve got no idea, but he\u2019s so clever.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related Article\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Clark, who now works with young people on leadership, including with Carlton\u2019s AFLW team, agreed with Greensmith\u2019s portrayal of her, though she may not have been so quiet in her youth.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Hopeful] is really the only way to be around a sport because if you\u2019re not that, then you\u2019re looking backwards, and you\u2019re not going to move anywhere … But I feel like my contribution to cricket has always been about being trying to be bold and having a go at things, playing in a certain way and not accepting status quo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clark helped push women\u2019s cricket into the professional era, first as CEO of Women\u2019s Cricket Australia (while she was still playing), and later held executive roles running Cricket Australia\u2019s national academy and game development.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve probably got deep pockets, some of them, and so they\u2019re making inroads. There\u2019s no excuse for India not to be paying players a substantial amount of money, if you consider the amount they have as an organisation,\u201d Clark said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo absolutely, Australia lit that fire, and there are some challenges in making sure they stay at the forefront. That\u2019s not only financially rewarding players, but also making sure that the pathways are there and the whole game is healthy.<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralians expect that anyone from anywhere, if you\u2019re good, you can find your way. That\u2019s not always the case everywhere in the world, and I feel like that approach needs to be really at the forefront when we make investment decisions about, particularly cricket, but all sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MolineuxMolineux emulates a famous Warne pose after Australia won the T20 World Cup at Lord\u2019s.ICC via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The Marylebone Cricket Club has been commissioning portraits since 1880 \u2013 the first was of W.G. Grace, the father of English cricket.<\/p>\n

But when Charlotte Goodhew, collections and programs manager at Lord\u2019s, began to curate the collection in 2008 she vowed to correct a striking imbalance.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was clear from my analysis that the collection was very white, British male dominant and I wanted to tell a more balanced and authentic global story of cricket,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Australians to have peered down on the Long Room include Bradman, Keith Miller, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, though the Warne painting is now above the away dressing room staircase. Goodhew pushed for more women on the walls.<\/p>\n

Clark is the first non-English woman in the Long Room gallery she walked through on her way out to bat in 1998.<\/p>\n

She made 89 that day, and Australia completed a clean sweep of the series against England. The room attendant used masking tape to record Cathryn Fitzpatrick\u2019s five-wicket haul and Lisa Keightley\u2019s century on the honour boards.<\/p>\n

Editor’s pick\"Anthony<\/a><\/p>\n

In the Lord\u2019s Rose Garden, Clark and England captain Karen Smithies burned a bat to create the women\u2019s Ashes trophy. \u201cWe were made to feel very welcome,\u201d Clark said.<\/p>\n

The next time she visits she\u2019ll be part of the decor, in the company of Bradman, Tendulkar but also of the late Heyhoe Flint, who led the campaign for the club to open its doors to women. (Heyhoe Flint sent in her first application using only her first initial so the MCC would assume she was a man. It didn\u2019t work.)<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great that [Lord\u2019s] is moving in this direction to be way more open,\u201d Clark said. \u201cThey [the MCC] are contributing to the sport well beyond that ground and the people that play on it, so I think it\u2019s important to recognise that they are trying to ensure the game is inclusive.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"ChloeChloe Saltau<\/a> is Sports Editor of The Age and a former chief cricket writerConnect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791117,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-791116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791116\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791117"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}