‘I feel a responsibility’: Isa Guha receives massive honour for her devotion to giving others a chance to shine

In the infancy of her teens, Isa Guha loved nothing more than donning the whites and picking up the red ball when bowling against the boys in the majestic Thames Valley.

A couple of decades on, the former England star and Fox Cricket expert analyst was this week recognised by King Charles for her charity work spreading her love of the sport to girls and women at home.

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Her duties on the Kayo Sports coverage of the Ashes aside, it has been a busy summer for Guha, who has run fundraising events for her charity Take Her Lead across Australia before and during Test matches in support of this goal.

In light of the legacy she is setting away from the microphone with Take Her Lead, Guha received an MBE — a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire — in King Charles’s New Year’s Honours List for 2026.

Guha has always been a standout.

But it was not just because of a talent so exceptional she won Ashes series and a World Cup with England. She was also the only girl playing cricket in her area as a kid and the sport was not an option at her school.

So she went it alone.

“My brother, who is seven years older than me, used to play for our local club and was always practising in the back garden,” she said in a first-person piece for The Guardian in 2012.

“I used to run around after the ball (and) my parents could tell I was interested in it too, so they took me down to the local club as well. There were no other girls, so I just started playing with the boys. I loved getting them out.”

An invitation to play with the Thames Valley Under-21 team, when aged 11, led to a meeting with former England representative Charlotte Edwards and it “all spiralled from there”.

A trailblazer, Guha became the first woman of south Asian heritage to play for England and featured in eight Tests, 83 ODIs and 22 T20s for her nation in a highly successful career.

Back issues forced Guha into retirement in her late-20s and while she had degrees in neuroscience, biochemistry and molecular biology from University College London, cricket and sport has remained her passion and a career in broadcasting beckoned.

Her expertise is celebrated by Fox Cricket throughout each summer of cricket, but the Londoner is also a regular for the BBC each Wimbledon and has played prominent roles in the broadcaster’s coverage of the Paris Olympics and Birmingham Commonwealth Games.

But it is for her work with Take Her Lead — which focuses on furthering inclusivity and participation in cricket for girls and young women — as much her excellence on the field and behind the microphone that Guha was honoured with the MBE.

In the first person piece back in 2012, Guha acknowledged something that had troubled her and inspired her to continue in her bid to make a difference for the type of girl she once was.

“Asian parents generally tend to channel their children, especially their daughters, into studying and not sport,” she wrote at the time.

“I see a lot of Asian girls playing cricket now, but they all tend to drop off when they hit 16 or 17 years old and give it up. I was lucky, because my parents encouraged me. I feel a responsibility now to set an example to other Asians, and that also makes me feel proud.”

The desire to make a difference never left Guha, even as her professional life became busier and busier, and she founded the charity Take Her Lead to pursue these goals.

In a chat with Fox Cricket podcast The Follow On in late November, she said there were plenty of talented young girls from a south Asian background engaged in cricket but that only a handful of followed her into international cricket.

Trying to assist them take the step towards higher levels was challenging and she revealed Moya Dodd, a former Matildas vice-captain, had helped focus her charitable work and what she hoped to achieve with her foundation.

“I dropped down to community levels and I was looking at the interest for south Asian girls, but they weren’t necessarily taking that (next) step onto the pathway,” she told The Follow On.

“I wanted to create something that was going to help support (them on) that journey. But also I recognised that to solve that problem, you need to bring everyone with you. And the stat that came out (from an Australian study) is that for girls between the age of 10 and 15, drop out is for 20 per cent more of a rate than boys.

“And then I spoke to Moya Dodd, who was a former Matildas vice-captain. She came out with this really interesting quote that I really resonated with, which was that boys needed to be competitive to feel like they belong, (whereas) girls need to feel like they belong before they can be competitive.

“Now I was really, really lucky in the sense that I had the support from my mum and advice from her at key moments on my journey where I probably wanted to quit, but if you don’t have that, then it’s quite easy to kind of leave the game and leave the sport.”

Opportunity is key, but also the ability to learn from others who have succeeded in taking the next step in cricket, be it to a state or county level, and then onwards again to the big stage.

Take Her Lead runs a Champions program pairing young players from underprivileged or minority backgrounds with elite players in the English County system across the country.

“They’re on the pathway already. They’re 18 plus. We recruit them. We train them up and they go and deliver workshops,” she said.

“After three sessions with these players, these young girls have built self esteem confidence, and they identify more as cricketers. There’s a real team unity there in the team sessions. So it’s really about wanting to try and keep girls in cricket after they have first access to it.

“So what we’re trying to do on this tour is to try and gauge interest, raise awareness and to increase the fundraising so that that can support our programs for next year. But I know that there are similar challenges here in Australia, so that’s why raising awareness is really important.”

Guha’s work across Australia over the summer has been aided in part by Rick Johnson, an English dad of two girls who play for the Cranleigh Cricket Club in Surrey.

If you can track down Johnson during the SCG Test for a pic during the MCG Test, and upload it on social media, he will donate to Guha’s charity, which has delivered more than “1000 inspirational opportunities for women and girls” over the past summer.

She drew praise from English Cricket Board chairman Richard Thompson, who also highlighted the contributions of ex-administrators Barry O’Brien and Derek Brewer, for broadening the opportunities for girls and women to be able to play cricket.

“Isa, Derek and Barry have contributed hugely to cricket, in different ways, and we are hugely grateful to them for the part they have played in supporting and driving the game forward,” he said.

“It is also so pleasing to see honours for individuals involved in the grassroots game. As a game, we are so lucky to have individuals that have given their lives to cricket.”