Hosts comprehensively beaten in the Home of Cricket’s first ever women’s Test<\/p>\n
India beat England by 270 runs as the first women’s Test in the history of Lord’s concluded with the \u200chosts dismissed for 186 while chasing a target of 457.<\/p>\n
Lord’s, cricket’s most iconic ground, \u200chas been hosting international matches since 1884. It staged its first women’s international in 1976, a 50-over \u200cmatch between England and Australia.<\/p>\n
It took another 50 years for a women’s Test, scheduled for four days from Friday, to be held at the ground owned by the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), which prohibited women members until 1999.<\/p>\n
Put in to bat, opener Smriti Mandhana (83) held firm \u200cas India lost \u200ctwo quick \u2060wickets, before Issy Wong had her caught behind.<\/p>\n
Captain Harmanpreet Kaur (58) \u200band Deepti Sharma (57) helped the visitors to post 285, while Sophie Ecclestone (3-68) took the last three wickets in quick succession.<\/p>\n
In reply, England posted only 170 as 22-year-old Indian medium-pacer Kranti Gaud \u2060took 5-37. She became the \u200cfirst woman \u200bto have her name inscribed on the Lord’s Test honours board, reserved for those who score \u200ba century, \u200ctake five wickets in an innings or 10 in a Test at the ground.<\/p>\n
Two more \u200bwomen soon joined Gaud on the board as Indian wicketkeeper-batter Yastika Bhatia (113) scored a crucial century, while Ecclestone (5-118) shone again with a five-wicket haul. India declared at 7-341 \u200bon \u200bthe third day, setting a target of \u200b457.<\/p>\n
Under pressure, England’s top order collapsed \u200cas Gaud dismissed Tamsin Beaumont and Heather Knight early, leaving the hosts reeling at 4-34.<\/p>\n
Mady Villiers (26) tried to limit the damage but fell when Richa Ghosh at silly mid-off spectacularly caught a well-timed cover drive, leaving even her teammates shaking their \u200bheads in disbelief.<\/p>\n
Amy Jones (54) fell early on the fourth day but Ecclestone continued the fight, \u200bscoring her first Test \u206050 before Sneh Rana (4-42) bowled her, ending England’s chase.<\/p>\n
Heather Knight and Tammy Beaumont on the Lord’s balcony after their final Test \/\/ Getty<\/p>\n
It meant England failed to send veterans Heather Knight and Tammy Beaumont out on a high with both making their final appearances in international cricket.<\/p>\n
Knight, who debuted in 2010, bows out as England Women’s all-time record appearance-maker \u200cwith 320 \u200ccaps. She \u2060captained the side 199 times between 2016 \u200band 2025, securing 134 victories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hosts comprehensively beaten in the Home of Cricket’s first ever women’s Test India beat England by 270 runs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":798765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85,83],"class_list":["post-798764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-text"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798764","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=798764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}