Mandhana’s 300th and Beaumont’s goodbye frame the Lord’s Test
As Lord’s stages its first ever women’s Test, Smriti Mandhana reaches 300 internationals as the youngest to the mark while England’s Tammy Beaumont plays her international farewell.
Jul 10, 2026
The first women’s Test at Lord’s was always going to be about the occasion. It turns out the occasion comes with two personal stories running underneath it. Smriti Mandhana walks out for her 300th international, getting to the mark younger than any woman before her. At the other end of her career, England’s Tammy Beaumont plays the last match of a 17-year international life. One player is still climbing, the other is stepping down, and both chose the grandest stage in the game to do it.
Mandhana gets to 300 first
Mandhana is 29, and this is game number 300 for India across formats. Nobody has reached that figure at a younger age in women’s cricket, which tells you how early she arrived and how rarely she has been left out since. She made her India debut as a teenager and has been the first name on the team sheet almost ever since, opening the batting and, more recently, serving as Harmanpreet Kaur’s vice-captain.
The numbers behind the milestone are heavy. She sits among the leading run-scorers in the history of women’s international cricket, and her 17 international centuries are level with Meg Lanning and Laura Wolvaardt for the most anyone has made in the women’s game. Most of those hundreds have come in white-ball cricket, though she has two in the longer format from just a handful of Test outings, including a highest score of 149. India have played red-ball cricket only occasionally in recent years, so a four-day game at Lord’s is closer to a novelty than a habit for this group.
The timing helps too. India arrive still sore from a group-stage exit at the Women’s T20 World Cup, and Mandhana did not have the tournament she wanted. A landmark match at Lord’s is as good a place as any to reset.
Beaumont bows out at the home of cricket
For Beaumont, this is the end. The 35-year-old confirmed she will retire from international cricket once the Test is done, closing a career that started in 2009 and ran through the whole modern boom in the women’s game. She is England’s record century-maker in one-day internationals, and in 2023 she became the first England woman to score a Test double hundred, an unbeaten 208 against Australia that still stands as the highest Test score by an Englishwoman.
She has said she will keep playing domestic cricket, so this is not a full goodbye to the sport. But an international career that began when women’s Tests were an afterthought now ends in the first one ever staged at Lord’s. Few players get an exit that lines up so neatly with a moment in the game’s history.
A rare red-ball day
Around the two headline names sits a Test that is a curiosity in itself. Red-ball cricket has become a rarity in the women’s calendar, played once in a blue moon and rarely at a venue like this. Nat Sciver-Brunt leads England, Harmanpreet leads India, and both squads carry uncapped players who will remember a first Test cap coming at Lord’s for the rest of their lives.
India would love to make the result match the setting after a bruising few weeks. For Mandhana, who already owns two Test hundreds and a best of 149 in the format, a century at Lord’s would be one of the sweeter lines on an already crowded CV. For Beaumont, it is a last walk through the Long Room. Whatever the scoreboard says by Monday, the day itself already means something.