A portrait of the former England cricketer, and the current Head Coach of the England women’s team, Charlotte Edwards, was unveiled in the Long Room at Lord’s this evening.

Edwards has been honoured for her achievements on and off the pitch with the portrait, and she was joined by her family and those that inspired her career for the unveiling of the artwork by Hero Johnson.

The former England captain represented her country over 300 times, winning two World Cups, including the T20 World Cup against New Zealand at Lord’s in 2009. She also lifted the Ashes five times across a career which spanned two decades.

Edwards was recently appointed the new Head Coach of England, and despite a busy schedule of coaching commitments last year, she was closely involved in this commission and gave much of her time to the creative process.

Edwards said of her portrait: “I want to thank MCC for this wonderful honour. I walked into the Long Room tonight and I was blown away seeing my portrait in this wonderful room with so many great players – it is truly special.

“I think Hero [Johnson, the artist] has captured everything about me – when I first saw this it brought a tear to my eye. 

“I think my dad would have been very, very proud of this.”

The Lord’s Portrait Programme has been running in its current form for two decades, but MCC has been collecting art and artefacts since the Victorian period, opening a dedicated museum in the 1950s making it the oldest sporting museum in Europe, and the second oldest in the world.

The Club currently houses around 3,000 pictures, 287 of which are portraits, and this latest commission of Edwards was painted by Hero Johnson.

Johnson is a visual artist, based in London and originally from Cornwall, and is a member of The Royal Society of Portrait Painters. In her process of painting, she found Edwards to be very at home at Lord’s, and, given the focus on the environment she has painted her in, it is a slightly unusual commission for Johnson as an artist.

She said: “My original ideas had centred on the pitch and the physical nature of the sport, but having met Charlotte I started to appreciate how important the mental dimension of the game is, the strategy and psychology of it, and the necessary cricket brain, so it seemed as appropriate to show her in thought rather than action.

“It is always my intention from the outset to try and capture something of my sitter's inner world, as far as I can perceive/interpret it. I think you then paint with that feeling. I think the psychological aspect of portraiture is as important as the physical likeness. Without it maybe you could have a great painting, but I'm not sure it would be a portrait.”

Charlotte Goodhew, MCC Collections and Programmes Manager, said: “We are very proud of our portrait collection at Lord’s – some of cricket’s most illustrious personnel are on display around the Pavilion.

“Charlotte, thanks to her outstanding career and her position as a trailblazer in women’s cricket, very much adds to that pantheon, and we are delighted to make her portrait the newest addition to the iconic Long Room.”