Enid Bakewell: Indomitable at 82 after blazing a trail for the modern women's game

When England and Australia walk through the Long Room at Lord's on Saturday for the third T20I of this year's Women's Ashes, both sets of players will know they are walking on the shoulders of giants.

Long before the current generation was able to embrace full professionalism, and compete in front of 20,000-strong crowds on a regular basis, their forebears were raising their own funds for months-long amateur tours - and paying for their own kit along the way, including their England blazers of course.

And no women's cricketer better epitomises that struggle for recognition than the legendary Enid Bakewell. Fifty years ago this month, her century against Australia secured glory for England in the first Cricket World Cup (men's or women's); three years after that, in 1976, she made another matchwinning fifty against the Aussies, as England's women were, finally, permitted to play on that hallowed turf at Lord's.

And Bakewell will be paying close attention to events at Lord's on Saturday, as Heather Knight's team continue their battle to stay in Ashes contention. These days, however, it might be best if they avoid walking literally on her shoulders. At the venerable age of 82, even the most indestructible icon of the women's game is beginning to feel a bit of wear and tear.

"I have to bowl underarm these days, because this bowling arm won't get it all the way down the pitch," Bakewell tells ESPNcricinfo. "I've had both knees replaced, and I should really be having my shoulder done, but apparently it's too complicated an option, so they're advising not to have that done. But I still have a whale of a time."

That much was apparent in the winter just gone, when Bakewell embarked on a playing tour of Australia and New Zealand, where she even picked up a Player-of-the-Match award in East Anglian Veteran Ladies' opening fixture against Queensland Veterans CC.

"That was wonderful," she says. "We didn't win a game, because of course we were playing men most of the time, and we had some matches rained off as well. But we made some really good friends.

"The Aussies of course, were extremely competitive. The New Zealanders were more friendly in a way, just as competitive really. The biggest problem I had all tour was getting myself out of a Jacuzzi that hadn't got any handles on it!"

If that episode proved to be a brief struggle Down Under, it was nothing compared to Bakewell's first tour of Australia in 1968-69: to this day perhaps the archetypal example of how much women's cricketers of her pioneering generation were forced to sacrifice, in order to fulfil their dreams of playing for their country.

At the age of 28, and already a mother of a young daughter, Bakewell reasoned it was now or never, having already missed the chance to debut against New Zealand in 1966 due to her pregnancy. And sure enough, after a century on her Test debut at Adelaide in December 1968, she confirmed her status as the greatest allrounder of her era, as she became the first cricketer to score 1000 runs and take 100 wickets on the same tour.

But though that tour made her name and helped to raise the profile of the women's game, it meant leaving her daughter behind in England for four months - in the capable care of her own father, as it happened, an ex-coalminer from Nottinghamshire with an admirably enlightened attitude to childcare. And, as for the fundraising for such a lengthy trip, that involved all manner of optimistic schemes.

"I used to sell potatoes outside the front of my house, and I had to go and get more from the greengrocer when I sold out," Bakewell says. "We sold books, for about 6d each as it was then. And my dad was on the council and he chatted up some of the local landowners, but I don't think they actually gave me a donation at all.

"I suppose I didn't really realise how hard it was. But quite honestly, I was so competitive. I came from a mining village, and of course, normally, in Newstead, women didn't go out to work. They stayed home, looked after the children, did the housework … had to get home to get the men's tea ready…"

And so, within that context, the idea of women trying to play cricket was an absurd proposition: "like a man trying to knit", as the great Len Hutton once put it. Last month, that infamous quote made it into the long-awaited report by the Independent Commission for Equity in Sport, as part of a scathing critique of English cricket's ingrained sexism.

Lord's in particular came in for a rough ride from the ICEC, with the commission expressing its "alarm" at the "truly appalling" fact that England's women had never played a Test match at Lord's.

"The 'home of cricket' is still a home principally for men," the report stated, in one of the most damning lines of its 317 pages.

And so, depending on your stance in the debate, it's either auspicious or awkward timing for Lord's to be hosting this particular Ashes fixture - the first bilateral women's T20I in the ground's history and only the second international in the format there after England's victory in the World T20 final, way back in 2009.

Bakewell's life story, however, is living testimony to the truth that underpins the ICEC's verdict. Last year, after an at-times interminable debate, MCC finally deigned to erect a tribute to Rachael Heyhoe Flint, Bakewell's long-time captain and England team-mate. Quite apart from a mighty career in her own right, Heyhoe Flint was the driving force behind the inaugural 1973 World Cup - and had it not been for that event, the men's event in 1975 surely would not have followed so swiftly afterwards.

The final of that event, however, had to be held at Edgbaston, not Lord's, because MCC would not entertain the notion of hosting women at their venue. It would be another 25 years, in 1998, before the first female members would be permitted to join the club and end almost 200 years of male-only status. Heyhoe Flint was among that initial tranche of new members, but not Bakewell at that stage: "I'd had children, you see, so they got in the way of me playing for England"

But eventually, in August 2022, five years after her untimely death on the eve of the 2017 Women's World Cup, the Heyhoe Flint Gate was unveiled at Lord's - complete with a plaque and a portrait to commemorate a "Pioneer for Women in Cricket". Bakewell, sadly, was unable to attend that initial ceremony, but was back at Lord's in March to see the tribute for herself.

"It's such a wonderful picture of her," she says. "She used to play the ukulele round here, while handing out leaflets to raise awareness, just to let people know that women did play cricket. We used to go around everywhere, playing against men's teams. I remember one match where a chap got about 176 against our women's team, and she came in after she had got out for just a few, and she threw her bat across the room.

"I was in the same boat at Trent Bridge, really," she adds. "It's taken years for them to put any pictures of women's cricketers up there, but now they've got a bat that I signed and gave to them, and a cap that I brought back all the way from Sri Lanka. If ever someone interviewed me, I knew they wouldn't know anything about women's cricket. So I'd just talk and entertain the crowd, and they would laugh their heads off."

Finally, however, the times they are a-changing for the women's game, and Bakewell could not be more delighted for opportunities that are coming the way of her successors in the game. "It's amazing, and it's really wonderful that they are being given so much publicity," she says.

"Anya, she's my heroine," she adds, referencing Anya Shrubsole, who happens to be listening in as Bakewell holds court at the top of the Lord's Pavilion.

"She was cool, calm and collected when Jenny Gunn dropped that catch against India," she adds of the moment, in the fraught final stages of the epic 2017 50-over World Cup final, when Gunn at mid-off let one of the simplest catches of her life go down, with India nine-down and ten runs from claiming the title. Undeterred, Shrubsole turned at the top of her mark, charged in once more, and plucked out Rajeshwari Gayakwad's off stump to seal the title, and her own immortality, with figures of 6 for 46.

Bakewell's own best figures, incidentally, were 7 for 61 - for match figures of 10 for 75 - in the last of her 12 Tests, against West Indies at Edgbaston in 1979. She's left such analyses long behind her now, but nothing will ever manage to stifle her competitive spirit.

These days, Bakewell's enthusiasm for local politics takes up most of her time ("I'll be stuffing my election leaflets into envelopes while watching the cricket," she says) but she's also now joined her daughter's eight-a-side over-50s team. "I managed a catch behind the wicket the other day... and I actually managed to sit at the side and not say anything unless I was asked, which was very difficult …

"I go to keep-fit on a Monday, and keep-fit on a Tuesday with an actual physio. Then I do yoga on a Wednesday; on Thursday, I usually catch up with my hair and all sorts of things. On Friday, I'll go walking with a friend. And then my grandson comes home from school."

That is the measure of the bedrock upon which the modern women's game is founded. It's little wonder it feels quite so robust at this moment.