Cricket: Women in at MCC

INVITATIONS HAVE been issued to five women cricketers asking them to apply to become playing members of MCC.

Lucy Mullens, a PE teacher at Taunton School, Somerset, is the only one named by the club.

The MCC voted last year to scrap a 211-year tradition of banning women from joining the all-male club and an MCC spokesman, Stuart Weatherhead, said yesterday that to join the woman have to play a number of qualification matches and be nominated by three current members.

Mullens, 24, first started playing cricket at 18 while a pupil at the private school where she now teaches. She was asked to stand in for an absent player during a game.

"I am absolutely thrilled to have been asked to apply," she said. "I love cricket, so being asked to join is a great honour. Hopefully, I will be a bit of a role model."