IND-W vs ENG-W One-off Test preview: Lord’s welcomes the women’s game in historic fixture

Heather Knight, her hands folded, smiles from a billboard at a bus stop in St. John’s Wood. You have just seen the England batter strapping her pads on on another billboard during the ride on London’s famously efficient underground train services, better known as tube.

She is at Lord’s, too. This billboard is much bigger.

There’s nothing like this. All those advertisements say.

There certainly has been nothing like this at Lord’s for 239 years. A Women’s Test.

Women cricketers are indeed doing what they are good at. Breaking glass ceilings.

Only a couple of months ago, Sarah Taylor was appointed as the fielding coach of England’s men’s team. One of cricket’s greatest wicketkeepers, male or female, she played only 10 Tests though she figured in 126 ODIs and 90 T20Is. Women get to play so few Tests, yes.

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So the players of both England and India will be excited about the historic Test starting at Lord’s on Friday. It would also be an opportunity for both teams to push behind them the disappointments they had at the T20 World Cup, which had concluded last Sunday. England had lost the final to the brilliant Australians, who, earlier, had knocked out India with their win in the last group game.

The last time the two teams met in a Test was in Navi Mumbai in 2023. India had won that game by 347 runs. Deepti Sharma had match figures of nine for 39 and that was after making 67 in the first innings.

She could have a key role to play here, too. She would be hoping batters like Smriti Mandhana, Shafali Verma, Jemimah Rodrigues and captain Harmanpreet Kaur put enough runs on the board. It cannot be easy though, against the England bowlers, whom you could see, training, from the media centre.

At the media box, you are greeted on the glass door by several vintage photographs and drawings chronicling women’s cricket. On the top-left corner is a drawing of the first ever recorded women’s match, played at Guildford, near Surrey, between the villages of Bramley and Hambledon, in 1745.

In the picture, women, in long, full-sleeved dresses, are in all their full finery, including decorated hats. One of them is in front of the two stumps, with bat in her hands, and is waiting for the ball.

Her wait is finally over.

Published on Jul 09, 2026