Pitch Perfect

Cricket may be called the gentleman’s game but that was never going to deter Meg Lanning. Genevieve Gannon meets Australia’s much-admired captain.

In late June 2006, a cricket match is underway in Repton, south of Sheffield in the UK. The under-19 opening bowler for England watches the new batsman walk to the crease. Confusion flickers across the bowler’s face. His teammates snicker. The batsman is a girl. Fourteen years old, yet somehow she’s in the batting line-up of an elite Melbourne private school’s boys’ cricket team, a blonde ponytail sticking out from under her helmet. The fast bowler shortens his run-up, taking four steps before releasing the ball. Willow and leather connect with a crack and the ball shoots to the boundary for a four.

“There are things you never forget and I’ll never forget that innings Meg Lanning played,” former Carey Baptist Grammar School cricket coach Neil Williams, says, laughing as he recounts her focused attack.

“The bowler looked at her, hands on hips, walked back to his full run-up, came in and bowled his next ball. She hit that for four as well.

“This little girl had just smashed those kids ... and that’s when we thought, wow, she’s very special.”

When Meg reached a half-century, the English players, laughter banished, came to shake her hand. Then she made another 13 runs.

The visiting team was a development squad from Carey in Melbourne. Meghann Moira Lanning had arrived from NSW in Year 7 wanting to play cricket, and as no girls’ team was available, had joined in with the boys. After two years playing with the 7As and 8As, she was chosen to represent Carey in the Associated Public Schools competition. It was rare for a Year 9 pupil to be selected to play in the First XI. But a girl? Unprecedented. Nobody had done it before, or since. It was the first of many conventions and records the player who came to be known as “the megastar” would smash.