Alex Hartley spent four seasons with Middlesex and has never played at the game’s headquarters but she gets her chance on Sunday for England against India

It is a quirk of the women’s game – one that does not reflect well on domestic cricket – that England’s left-arm spinner Alex Hartley, having spent four seasons playing for Middlesex before returning to her home county Lancashire this summer, has never played at Lord’s. In fact, only in her last two seasons at the club were the Middlesex Women allowed to use the indoor school, situated next to the Nursery Ground, and they have never trained on the grass wickets.

The only chance she had to have a good look around Lord’s came about 10 years ago, when she accompanied her father on a tour of the ground. With England training here before their sold-out final against India on Sunday, the 23-year-old took the chance to take in her surroundings on Thursday.

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“I stood out there in the middle and thought: ‘Oh no – you’ve got to be kidding! That’s a lot of seats.” Nerves quickly turned to excitement, then from excitement to the sort of defiance that has seen Hartley emerge as one of the players of the tournament: a quality, left-arm orthodox bowler who, in a tournament of big scores, has gone at under four an over. She cannot wait to play here for the first time.

“We’ve sold it out,” she says. “It’s proof that people are taking women’s cricket seriously, no matter the result on Sunday. We’ve done the world of good for English cricket. Who knows what will happen in the future.” Tammy Beaumont, Lauren Winfield and Fran Wilson are three others who have grafted to get to where they are now – all three deserving of their positions in England’s batting line-up. Hartley’s rise, though, has been the most punchy.

A year ago she was a good spin bowler who had work to do on her batting and bowling. She would get tweets telling her as much.Now, between flinging herself around at fine-leg, saving boundary after boundary, she is getting the best players in the world out. Meg Lanning, Suzie Bates, and Sophie Devine are three of eight who have fallen to her this World Cup.

“I got told as a kid I’d never spin a ball, yet I’m one of the only left-arm spinners in the world that spins it,” says Hartley in a matter-of-fact manner. “I got told I’d never play for England and I wanted to be like, ‘Up yours, I’ve done it! I’m gonna stay here.’”

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Hartley is not alone when it comes to avoiding anodyne answers. Take the India captain, Mithali Raj, putting a journalist in his place before the competition had even started, when asked who her favourite male cricketer was. “Do you ask the same question to a male cricketer?” went Raj’s riposte. “Do you ask them who their favourite female cricketer is?”

If Twitter on Thursday was anything to go by, there was no need. Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, Kapil Dev and countless other greats of the game came out in awe of Harmanpreet Kaur’s unreal knock of 171 not out from 115 balls that stunned the life out of the defending champions, Australia.

A few England players watched on while they were in the gym, many tweeting out their own OMGs. Kaur will be playing in the Super League for Surrey Stars, alongside Hartley and Beaumont. Naturally they are both chuffed that this Sunday will be the last time they play against her this summer.

The support for both sides has been the most impressive of the tournament over the last month. More than 4,000 packed into Bristol to watch England beat Australia in the group stages while India-Pakistan sold out in Derby the week before. Sunday’s expected crowd of around 27,000 should be a loud, boisterous mix of both.

One has to go back to the 1993 World Cup when Lord’s last hosted a women’s World Cup final. England and New Zealand duked it out in skirts, with the hosts triumphing in front of a crowd of 5,000 which, at the time, was the highest for a World Cup match. Aside from the mammoth 80,000 who attended the 1997 final in Kolkata this will be the best attended.

Factor in a global TV audience, which so far has reached in excess of 50 million, and an expected global viewership 80% greater than the 2013 edition, and this will be the most visible women’s World Cup match. And rightly so. There has never been a better time to watch the two best sides in the world.