LONDON: English women’s cricketing great Rachael Heyhoe-Flint who captained them to victory in the 1973 World Cup has died aged 77, the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) announced on Wednesday.

Heyhoe Flint, who played for England in 22 Tests and 23 One-day Internationals from her debut in 1960 to her retirement in 1982, captained the side for a 12-year period from 1966 to 1978 and in 2004.

Heyhoe-Flint scored three Test centuries most famously a marathon 8½-hour series-saving 179 at The Oval in 1976 against Australia, was a pathfinder in many ways for English women’s cricket.

She was the first woman to captain the team in a Test at Lord’s in the same 1976 series against the Australians and the first female to be elected onto the MCC’s full committee in 2004.

The MCC expressed condolences at the passing of a pioneer of the women’s game, who was the first woman elected to the MCC committee.

“This is a terribly sad day for everyone involved in cricket and all of us at MCC,” said club president Matthew Fleming in a statement. “Rachael Heyhoe-Flint was a pioneer of women’s cricket — she was the first global superstar in the women’s game and her overall contribution to MCC, cricket and sport in general was immense.”

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) also hailed her contribution to the game.

“Rachael was one of our sport’s true pioneers and it is no exaggeration to say that she paved the way for the progress enjoyed by recent generations of female cricketers,” said Clare Connor, the ECB’s director of women’s cricket.

Heyhoe-Flint also became the first woman cricketer to be inducted into the sport’s Hall of Fame in 2010 and such was her renown that back in 1973 she became the first female sports presenter on British television when ITV hired her.

She became a director of English football side Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1997 and in 2011 became a member of the British Parliament’s Upper Chamber the House of Lord’s at the invitation of then Prime Minister David Cameron.

Wolverhampton Wanderers players will wear black armbands as mark of respects to Heyhoe-Flint in Saturday’s Championship game at Norwich City.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2017