The first time Belinda Clark walked through the Long Room at Lord’s as a player she had an acute sense that this was not a privilege afforded to many women.
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.
“It was obviously a place that was a male bastion,” Clark recalled, “and the people in this room watching you walk out to bat were predominantly males.”
Had Clark looked up at the walls she would have seen more male faces looking down at her.
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.
Only a handful of portraits of women have made it into the Long Room, including former England captains Rachael Heyhoe Flint and Charlotte Edwards.
Unlike Edwards, who is depicted on the Lord’s balcony in full England kit, Clark is not painted in a cricket setting at all.
“The 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’s about her as a person in all spheres of life,” explained Melbourne artist Andrew Greensmith.
“She doesn’t push that [she was] a cricketer at all, and I think that is a true reflection of her.”
Greensmith tried to convey Clark’s essential qualities.
“She’s quiet, but strong and proud and hopeful for the future,” he said.
“She’s quite casual, and I put her in a not perfectly ironed shirt. I wanted to just show that pride, and leadership … You can just tell she would have been a great leader for a team.”
Clark, 55, is dual World Cup-winning captain and batting great who paved a path for the likes of Meg Lanning and Alyssa Healy.
Her world record for the highest score of 229 not out in a women’s one-day international stood for two decades, and for much of that time had not been surpassed by a man, either.
She was thrilled with the painting, and how the bursts of light in it capture her essential optimism.
“At 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’s me, that looks like me.
“He’s showing this dark and light shadow, and that’s really what life’s about. There’s great moments, and there’s moments that are not so great, and you’ve 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’ve got no idea, but he’s so clever.”
Clark, who now works with young people on leadership, including with Carlton’s AFLW team, agreed with Greensmith’s portrayal of her, though she may not have been so quiet in her youth.
“[Hopeful] is really the only way to be around a sport because if you’re not that, then you’re looking backwards, and you’re 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.”
Clark helped push women’s cricket into the professional era, first as CEO of Women’s Cricket Australia (while she was still playing), and later held executive roles running Cricket Australia’s national academy and game development.
“They’ve probably got deep pockets, some of them, and so they’re making inroads. There’s no excuse for India not to be paying players a substantial amount of money, if you consider the amount they have as an organisation,” Clark said.
“So absolutely, Australia lit that fire, and there are some challenges in making sure they stay at the forefront. That’s not only financially rewarding players, but also making sure that the pathways are there and the whole game is healthy.
“Australians expect that anyone from anywhere, if you’re good, you can find your way. That’s 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.”
The Marylebone Cricket Club has been commissioning portraits since 1880 – the first was of W.G. Grace, the father of English cricket.
But when Charlotte Goodhew, collections and programs manager at Lord’s, began to curate the collection in 2008 she vowed to correct a striking imbalance.
“It 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,” she said.
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.
Clark is the first non-English woman in the Long Room gallery she walked through on her way out to bat in 1998.
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’s five-wicket haul and Lisa Keightley’s century on the honour boards.
In the Lord’s Rose Garden, Clark and England captain Karen Smithies burned a bat to create the women’s Ashes trophy. “We were made to feel very welcome,” Clark said.
The next time she visits she’ll 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’t work.)
“It’s great that [Lord’s] is moving in this direction to be way more open,” Clark said. “They [the MCC] are contributing to the sport well beyond that ground and the people that play on it, so I think it’s important to recognise that they are trying to ensure the game is inclusive.”
News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.
Chloe Saltau is Sports Editor of The Age and a former chief cricket writerConnect via X or email.From our partners
About the Author
