England vs India – Tammy Beaumont to retire at the end of maiden women’s Lord’s Test

Tammy Beaumont will retire from international cricket at the end of this week’s historic Test match between England and India at Lord’s.

Beaumont, who turned 35 in March, has made 260 appearances for her country since making her debut in 2009, and is England Women’s leading ODI centurion with 12 hundreds to her name.

She was also Player of the Tournament during England’s triumphant 2017 World Cup campaign on home soil, finishing as the leading run-scorer with 410 runs.

Beaumont was overlooked for England’s squad which contested the most recent T20 World Cup, which ended in Australia beating the hosts by seven wickets in the final at Lord’s last Sunday.

That came after she had enjoyed something of a resurgence in the shortest format, having spent more than two years out of the reckoning for England, between January 2022 and March 2024.

She didn’t feature in any T20Is during the Ashes in Australia at the start of 2025, but returned to play all five T20Is during India’s tour of England last summer – scoring a fifty in the second and standing in as captain for the injured Nat Sciver-Brunt from the third onwards – before her latest omission. She was part of the England side knocked out in the semi-finals of the 2025 ODI World Cup but wasn’t included in England’s squad for three ODIs against New Zealand to start the summer.

Beaumont became the first English woman to score a Test double-century with her 208 in the Women’s Ashes Test at Trent Bridge in 2023. She is one of only two English women, and five English players, to have scored an international hundred in all three formats of the game.

“Playing for England for nearly 17 years has been the greatest honour,” Beaumont said. “When I fell in love with playing cricket as a young girl, I barely knew that playing cricket for England was an option and it brings me so much joy to think how many girls and boys have been inspired, this summer especially, and how far the game has come in our country.

“We’ve always wanted to take the cap forward for the next generation and the time has come for me to hand over that privilege to the next generation of England players. This Test match at Lord’s – our first-ever women’s Test at Lord’s – feels like the perfect occasion to sign off on a career that I could never have dreamt would be as special as it has been.”

Beaumont was among a group of 18 players who were the first to receive an England Women’s central contract in 2015.

Upon scoring her Test double-century, Beaumont revealed that she had considered retirement after being dropped from the T20I side in the lead-up to the home Commonwealth Games in 2022. However, she decided on that occasion “there’s life in the old girl yet”.

Shortly after that innings, she struck the highest-ever individual score in the Hundred, with 118 off 61 balls as Welsh Fire captain, a record which still stands across the men’s and women’s competitions.

Later in 2023, Beaumont was voted as the women’s winner of the Professional Cricketers’ Association Player of the Year award, adding to the honour she won in 2016. She has also long been an advocate for women’s health awareness in cricket, as Beaumont shared with Cricinfo’s Powerplay podcast in June 2025, as a player representative on the ECB’s Women’s Health Group.

Beaumont will continue to play domestic cricket, in which she currently represents The Blaze and, in the Hundred, Birmingham Phoenix.

Clare Connor, the ECB’s Managing Director of England Women, said: “Tammy has made a remarkable contribution to the England Women’s cricket team and we will miss her incredibly.

“It is impossible to put into words or measure the impact Tammy has had on our sport. She played her first few years for England as an amateur, one of only a few players left whose international careers were forged through extraordinary levels of devotion and commitment and love of the game.

“I know how much it has meant to Tammy to pull on the three lions and to help England win. She has always remained connected to the grassroots of the game and why she herself started playing. In so doing, she has been a wonderful role model, always wanting to inspire the next generation.”

Source link