Photographing the T20 Women's World Cup at Lord's
Women's sport deserves photographers who know the game
The T20 Women's World Cup final at Lord's was two decades in the making for me, and that's only counting from the summer I watched England win the Ashes from the other side of the boundary rope. This is the story of how a lifelong cricket fan came to photograph elite women's cricket at the Home of Cricket, and why knowing a game changes every frame you make of it."
A relationship that didn't last and one with cricket that did
I fell for cricket as a teenager, in the least glamorous way imaginable. I was dating an under-19 cricketer, which in practice meant spending more Sunday afternoons than I can count sitting in a car at the edge of a ground, watching a game I only half understood through a windscreen. Somewhere between the tea intervals and the slow fade of the light, the game got under my skin. The relationship didn't last. Cricket did.
For years afterwards, international cricket was how I marked my summers. I learned the game properly, not from a manual, but from thousands of hours of watching whilst listening to Test Match Special. In 2005 I was at Edgbaston for the full Ashes Test, the one England won by two runs, still the closest finish in the history of the rivalry. That same summer I spent days at Lord's and The Oval as England edged towards the urn. At Lord's I usually sat in the Compton or Edrich stands, absorbing the rhythms of the game: the field changes, a captain's body language, the way a session can turn before the scoreboard admits it.
From the stands to the boundary
This summer, two decades on, I was back at Lord's, this time below the Edrich Stand, camera in hand, photographing elite women's cricket at the ICC Women's T20 World Cup. I covered group matches in London and then the final itself on 5 July: a sold-out Lord's, a record crowd of more than 28,000, and Australia eventually lifting the trophy. England's day ended in disappointment. The occasion did not.
The full-circle strangeness of it kept catching me. Looking out from the Media Centre across the pitch towards the Pavilion, the exact reverse of every view I'd ever had of this ground. Passing Nasser Hussain in a corridor. Michael Atherton stepping into the lift as I wrestled my kit out of it. These were the voices that had narrated my summers, suddenly at arm's length. And catching up with Ebony Rainford-Brent, whom I'd met some years before when I was interviewed on BBC Sport, talking about the ACE Programme and the pathways now opening up for young cricketers, pathways that simply didn't exist when we were growing up.
A woman at the Home of Cricket
Lord's is iconic, traditional and gentlemanly to its bones. Professional sports photography, meanwhile, is still a space where women are heavily outnumbered; on plenty of boundaries I've been one of only a handful. So let me be clear about something: I wasn't at Lord's by accident, and I wasn't there to make up the numbers. I was there because I know this game, its rhythms, its pauses, its tension, its heritage and its stories and because I've spent most of my life loving it.
There's a longer story underneath that. Many girls and women of my generation loved sport but never had real access to play it. I had some cricket coaching at the Lord's indoor school in my early twenties, but by then whatever pathway might have existed had already passed me by. I realised I was better off carving out parts of my summer to sit in the stands and watch. Now, with a camera in my hand, I've found another way to belong inside the game.
Knowledge changes what you see
This is the part that matters if you commission photography. Knowing cricket changes what I photograph. All those summers of watching were with me at Lord's, the etiquette, the rhythms, the unwritten codes of the game, so I wasn't waiting for the obvious frame; I was anticipating it. I can read when a bowler is building pressure through a spell, when a field change telegraphs a plan, when a batter is one ball away from a milestone or a mistake. And I know the decisive images in cricket are often the pauses: the exhale between deliveries, the glance exchanged between overs, a captain's hands on her hips while the field resets. If you don't know the game, you photograph the action. If you do, you photograph the story.
That applies doubly to women's sport, where too much imagery still skims the surface. The T20 Women's World Cup drew record crowds and a new audience; women's cricket has never been more visible. What it needs now is depth, photographers, editors, publishers and brands willing to give it the same seriousness, craft and context the men's game has always been given. For governing bodies, campaign leads and editorial clients, that means working with people who understand what they're looking at and what that visibility means for the girls in the crowd.
The girl in the Compton Stand
Somewhere in the Compton Stand this summer there was a teenage girl watching women contest a World Cup final at Lord's, something my generation never saw. For her, the pathway exists. She can play. And if she'd rather tell the game's stories than play it, that path exists now too. Two decades ago I sat in those stands because it was the closest I could get to a game I loved. This summer I stood beneath them with a camera, photographing the game as it belongs to women. Not a spectator anymore. Part of it.
Planning coverage of women's sport in 2027 and beyond? I'd love to talk about how lived knowledge of a game makes the best pictures. Get in touch.
