‘What are culottes?’ It was a question Middlesex’s Australian import Hayleigh Brennan put to her new team-mates as they looked out over Lord’s, where they would later step out for their county’s first match at the ground.

Shoulders were shrugged until one cautiously replied: ‘A skirt with shorts?’ She was right. Until two decades ago, it was with practically bare legs and high socks, rather than trousers, that women were permitted to play the game.

When Charlotte Edwards made her 1996 debut for England, she was in culottes. The first two times she turned out at Lord’s women were not permitted to be members.

On Tuesday she led MCC against Middlesex. Sure, there are many moments that stand out as markers of how far the women’s game has evolved since Edwards, the former World Cup winning captain, started her journey. Middlesex’s belated invitation to play at HQ qualifies as another, reports The Guardian.

‘To walk out again and be captain of MCC it was a very proud moment,’ she said at stumps. Her teams lost a tight contest, unable to defend a total of 145 for three they made batting first and the winning runs being struck with a ball to spare.

But to Edwards the result of the exhibition match was less important than the fact it happened at all.

‘We were allowed in for the day,’ she recalled of those less enlightened days. ‘So now every time I come here the hairs on my neck stand up because it is the best venue in the world and to think now this is normal for women’s cricketers to be playing at Lord’s and hopefully also for domestic cricketers. That’s the special thing about today.’

It is significant, too, that only 12 months ago Angus Fraser, the Middlesex managing director of cricket, cooled expectations of a domestic women’s game at Lord’s.

‘You have to look at it realistically,’ he said then, noting the logistical challenges of finding space to play on cricket’s busiest piece of real estate. But then came the watershed summer of 2017.