PAUL HANDLEY, sagacious editor of The Church Times and choreographer of the annual match between the Archbishop of Canterbury’s team and St Peter’s Cricket Club, the Vatican side, writes that this year, for the first time, the archbishop’s side will include two women players.

Thea Smith, 25, and Becky Heath-Taylor, 30, are both currently ordinands at Trinity College, Bristol. Ms Smith will be flying out to Rome with her teammates the day after her ordination at Guildford Cathedral on 30 June; Ms Heath-Taylor is due to be ordained next year. Thea is a keen rugby and football player. “I only started playing cricket this year, so it’s quite jammy to go international so quickly,” she told The Times. Becky is also late to the crease; a keen distance runner, she played hockey and rounders at school.

St Peter’s Cricket Club is largely made up of Indian and Sri Lankan seminarians. They’re all men, of course, at least for now. The two sides have met every year since 2014, when the archbishop’s XI beat the Vatican team, as they have mostly done since. But although the teams compete with great commitment and seriousness, the result matters less than the camaraderie. “The power of cricket to bring people together should not be underestimated,” Handley says.