I became a detective in women’s cricket and found a treasure in an old cowshed in Lancashire | Sport

In the spring of 2011 I went to the MCC library at Lord’s – the world’s largest collection of printed material on cricket. I was at the start of a PhD on the history of women’s cricket and I wanted source material: surely I could find this?

No. When Neil Robinson of the MCC took me to the women’s cricket section on the shelves, I discovered that it consisted of three books, one of which was Rachael Heyhoe Flint’s autobiography, published in 1978. As for the MCC archives? The pantry was bare.

I decided then and there that one day I would write a book on the history of women’s cricket and it would appear in that section of the library. Ten years later, Covid struck, and thanks to lockdown I finally found the time. That book became The Women in Whites: A History of Women’s Cricket in England (published on June 1). I fervently hope that the MCC will obtain a copy as soon as possible.

In 2011 I was confronted with the most difficult questions: how do you write a history book without source material? England’s double World Cup winning year, 2009, had attracted attention, but I simply didn’t believe that Charlotte Edwards (or the ECB) had invented women’s cricket. I was right.

By the time the ECB finally joined the party in 1998, the Women’s Cricket Association (WCA) had been organizing women’s cricket for more than seventy years. The first women’s tests took place in Australia in the winter of 1934–35; between then and my visit to Lord’s more than 140 women had represented England.

I became a detective, tracked down some of them and convinced them to be interviewed – these women who had lived and breathed cricket, even in the face of ridicule. One interview was conducted while sitting in a golf cart, where I was silenced every time I asked a question as someone was about to take a shot. Heyhoe Flint showed her usual generosity by inviting me, an unknown young researcher, to tea on the terrace of the House of Lords. Enid Bakewell spoke to me for three and a half hours; In the end I had to leave, otherwise I would have missed the last train home.

Many of their stories focused on the WCA’s permanently impoverished financial status. England batsman Chris Watmough described writing hundreds of letters pleading for financial support for their 1968-69 tour to Australia and New Zealand. One of the companies that responded was the lingerie brand Berlei and so it was that England traveled to Australia in sponsored bras that winter.

Ruth Prideaux, who coached England to victory in the 1993 World Cup final at Lord’s, wanted to put in place a proper training program in the run-up to the tournament, but had so little money at her disposal that the players ended up sleeping on blow-up mattresses on her living room floor and doing their training by running along the pebbles of Eastbourne beach. Norma Izard told me about the time, in July 1998, when she borrowed a wok from the MCC kitchens to burn a miniature bat signed by the England and Australian teams, creating the first Women’s Ashes trophy.

One day I found gold. “You should go look at the Women’s Cricket Association archives,” someone said to me. “It’s somewhere in Lancashire.” ‘Somewhere’ turned out to be a small hamlet about eight miles east of Blackpool, and the documents referred to were kept in a former cowshed. England’s Carole Cornthwaite (née Hodges), who scored a hundred for England against Australia at Guildford in the 1993 World Cup, had retired after that tournament, married a farmer and agreed to take possession of the boxes.

I spent two weeks there one summer, making a ten-mile round trip each day from a B&B in the nearest village. Among garden furniture and rusty farm implements, I found untold historical treasures: small booklets dating back to the year the WCA was founded, 1926, scrapbooks, letters, travel diaries, newspaper clippings.

Slowly, I began to chart the trajectory of the women’s game and gain insight into some of the key characters. There was Betty Archdale, captain on that tour to Australia, who had such a distinctive captain’s style (and haircut) that the players nicknamed her ‘Hitler’. There was Myrtle Maclagan, daughter of an army officer, who looked down on Australians for their working-class roots and wrote that the men she met in Perth ‘smelled bad’. On the plus side, she took seven for 10 in the first women’s Test in Brisbane, and scored the first Test hundred in women’s cricket at the SCG a few weeks later.

There was the WCA founder, Marjorie Pollard, described by teammates as ‘a pain in the ass and an old know-it-all’, whose diehard attitude to proper dressing – ‘trousers are more than the pale’ – meant women played international cricket in skirts until 1997.

These pioneers were long gone when I came across their diaries and photographs, and many of those I interviewed for my PhD have also passed away. But I hope they will live on through this book, as their stories and achievements become more widely known. As we celebrate the richness of the present – ​​a fully professional women’s game in England and Wales – and dare to dream of another English victory at Lord’s, it is only right that we remember those who came before.

A quick epilogue: If you go to the MCC library these days and ask to see their women’s cricket collection, you won’t have the same experience as I did. In 2017, MCC acquired the WCA archive in its entirety and those boxes made their way from the farm in Lancashire to Lord’s (via a short stay in Taunton). A relief for archivists everywhere and a challenge for other researchers: why not try it yourself? We could probably use a few more books on women’s cricket.

The Women in Whites: A History of Women’s Cricket in England is now available for pre-order.

A joy for Mitchell

Sports broadcaster Alison Mitchell has received an unusual honor – she now has the right to drive a flock of sheep across Southwark Bridge. This week Mitchell was granted the freedom of the City of London – a centuries-old honor that originally granted the right to trade in the City (hence sheep herding). She joins a list of the city’s notable freemen including Mary Beard, Morecambe and Wise and the entire 2022 Lionesses squad. Closer to home, Eoin Morgan and Alastair Cook are also recipients of the honour, while fellow commentator Ebony Rainford-Brent shares Test Match Special’s sheepherding rights after receiving the Freedom in 2020.

One of the first women to commentate regularly on cricket (she joined TMS in 2007), Mitchell has been a pioneer, as recognized by City of London Corporation policy chairman Chris Hayward. “Alison Mitchell has smashed through the glass ceiling and established herself as a highly knowledgeable and versatile sports commentator, respected by her peers in the broadcasting industry and millions of sports fans at home and abroad,” he said. “By helping to make female voices in elite sports commentary the new normal, Alison deserves our praise and admiration.” De Spin wholeheartedly agrees with this.

Quote of the week

“Cricket is a fickle game” – Sophie Devine after scoring a match-winning 87 at Canterbury. Two days later she was looking for a duck when New Zealand collapsed to 80 all out at Hove, inadvertently proving her point.

Memory strip

May 27, 1976 | The Australian women’s team, having arrived at Heathrow five days earlier, heads to an afternoon of nets at Lord’s. It takes twenty years for women to become members of the MCC, but as a special treat, tourists are also allowed to enter the pavilion for a buffet lunch.

“The Australian women’s cricket team continues their unashamedly chubby course through England, happily handling scarce funds, manly widths and the bumpy humility of suburban cricket greens.,” writes Julie Welch in the Observer.

Two and a half months later, on August 4, the Australians return to Lord’s for a one-day international: the first women’s match on the field.

Do you want even more?

The T20 Blast is back and it’s everything, everywhere at once, writes Gary Naylor.

Benafsha Hashimi fled the Taliban for Australia in 2021 and is determined to fight for the ICC to follow FIFA’s lead and recognize Afghanistan’s exiled players as the national side. Taha Hashim has more.

Raf Nicholson watched as England women completed a 2-1 win over New Zealand in style.

Two elbows in one arm: Ali Martin charts Usman Tariq’s journey from auto parts company to the T20 Blast.

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