At yesterday’s AGM of the MCC at Lords, whilst there was a lot of talk in the press about turning the private club into a PLC, we have a very interesting discussion on the women membership efforts of the MCC in recent years. 

Mark Nicholas, the club chair, towards the end of a presentations on MCC governance referred to recent articles in the Sunday Times & The Times, said that the proposal to convert the club into a PLC had not come from within the club’s hierarchy, had no official status and was rather lacking in details. Certainly the proposal is was not on the AGM agenda and has not been put to a special General Meeting for later in the year. 

Having seen similar manoeuvrings around Manchester Utd Football Club over 25 years ago by Sky TV, l can’t help thinking that there are predator billionaire’s out there keen to pick up the MCC for small sum of money for them!

As a local member living in Marylebone, l have enjoyed going to Lords to watch and play cricket since my school days and long may this continue. Personally, this is neoliberalism in action.

We were also given a report back on Women’s membership of the MCC as a matter of discussion in the agenda of the meeting. Having recently assisted a women’s application, l was interested in what progress was being made at all. I found out that since historic 1998 vote, the MCC has replied on organic growth and as a result, the first women to reach the top of the waiting list, was not elected till 2018! In this respect, please see table below. So not much progress made at all, yet the women’s and girl’s is one of the fastest growing areas across cricket and all sports! Thus it was felt with the first women’s Test match at Lord’s to be held in 2026, to taking stock of the progress made in welcoming women into the club. 

Now at present rates of candidates awaiting election to become full membership – where only 531 out of 12,202 waiting were made full members in 2024 – you will have to late approximately 30 years before becoming a full member, if you joined today! This while, we still just have 556 women full members, which is less than 3 per cent of the total full membership. This after a special effort to encourage membership amongst female cricketers. This when we have a third of spectators attending matches are women as well.

So organic growth won’t be enough and a special effort needs being made and the discussion from the floor made for interesting reading. safe to say, there was a consensus certainly that something had to be done. 

So watch this space, to see if any further progress is being made on more women members to the MCC in the next 18 months. As for turning the MCC into a PLC, we’ll have to look out for a predator billionaire amongst our mists for sure now.