It was a perfect captain’s innings, and the Lord’s crowd knew it. There was a standing ovation for Megan Russell as she walked up the pavilion steps and through the Long Room on Saturday, 50 not out (retired). Having anchored her Bolton under-16 side through the tricky opening overs, Russell had accelerated with precision and flair, and when her stylish offside drives brought only ones and twos, she pulled out the hook and the slog sweep.
But then, this wasn’t Russell’s first rodeo. She made her Lord’s debut last year at 15, when she captained this side in their first National Hubs final against the same opposition. In 2022, Guildford lost to Bolton in a tense final over; now Guildford were out for revenge.
The National Hubs were developed by the MCC Foundation to help remedy the lack of opportunity for state-school cricketers to develop their talent. Russell encountered cricket as an eight-year-old at a Lancashire “village Olympics”, and joined her local club, but their girls offering was limited, and only football, netball and rounders were on offer at school.
The Bolton hub provided free training and matchplay at the level that pupils at private schools take for granted. “The coaching has been fabulous, and most of these girls I would never have met without the hub,” she says. “You learn so much about different cultures and backgrounds, it’s been a great way of developing as a person and as a cricketer.”
Saturday’s finals day was an ideal demonstration of how the foundation’s aims are being achieved. While Russell was making her mark on the main square, separate boys and girls tournaments for the London hubs were being held at the Nursery End. It gave the ground the feel of the best sports day ever and the London Spirit squad, who arrived at the north gate to pick up their kit before next week’s Hundred opener, went utterly ignored.
The tiered seating that overlooked the Nursery ground was filled with proud onlookers in colourful summer clothing. One father, passing the white picket fence that surrounds the pitch, calls out to a boundary fielder: “You bowled well! Love you!”Further along, 15-year-old Lois was padding up with her best friend, Abbi. For two years she had been in recovery from a broken hip – there were gruesome photos on her phone – and told that sport was no part of her future. Then she’d seen Abbi having a bowl in the nets at Upminster park and asked if she could have a go. “I ended up being leading wicket-taker in my first year,” says Lois. “Not to flex.”
In the indoor school, nervous parents craned over the balcony as their young charges took one-handed catches off the netting, or fired each other out from leg slip. Behind the stumps stood Amjed, whose stream of encouragement was as lively as his wicketkeeping. He was one of a large number of Afghan refugees in the Hammersmith hub, to whom cricket had given a sense of belonging and identity in their new home.
“I can’t speak highly enough of how the programme has built community,” says Rohan Kapadia,who runs the hub. “A lot of the boys hated school. There was a massive language barrier, and the schools they were going into didn’t play cricket. But the hub has really helped them integrate into society and given them a place where they train alongside others on an equal basis, a sense of normality. They’re so proud they sleep in their kit.”
Living in hotel accommodation on tiny allowances, involvement in this kind of competitive environment would have been completely impossible without the foundation providing equipment and more. “Some of the other parents realised they didn’t have snacks when they came to play,” says Kapadia, “so they quietly started putting on a halal spread at all our meet-ups.”
Back on the main square, Guildford had lost a handful of wickets before their captain, Abbi Shore-Hales, came to the crease. Her middle-order batting gave them the oomph they needed to knock off their target with three and a half overs to spare. Payback was sweet.
The girls packed up their stuff and handed over the dressing rooms to the boys’ finalists. “It’s really surreal thinking we’re sitting where the England and Australia teams were sitting less than a month ago,” said the Bradford captain, Hudson Rowan, who had a two-page dossier on his Reading rivals. In five years of senior school, Hudson has seen the cricket nets rolled out twice; there aren’t even enough young players at his local club for an under-18 team.
Eshan Jain, his Reading rival, lifted the boys’ trophy. But for most of the players and spectators, just being at Lord’s was the win. “This tradition, recent as it is compared to the older ones, is incredibly important to us,” said MCC president, Stephen Fry, as he handed out the awards. “Thank you for making us feel more proud than we have for a very long time.”
