A Game Sustained

146 changes. Evening cricket began to appear. Also in Leeds, the Hepworth Cup competition was played after work, primarily as a result of F.W.Elam’s efforts. It was made possible by the Daylight Savings changes and one reporter suggested it was surely unique for amatch to be playedwhile fully-illuminated tramcars passed the ground. Although there had been some opposition to the idea, in late July 1919 ‘Old Ebor’ enthused about the development, and hoped that clubs in Sheffield, Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Halifax, and elsewhere could institute evening cups the following year. He thought there would be no difficulty getting eight to 16 good entries for such a competition in Leeds, which could be played in four weeks in June and July. A meeting of Leeds clubs was held at Headingley at the end of November 1919, where rules were drawn up for an evening league of eight matches per team over two nights each in 1920. As we have already seen, the war was of great significance for women’s participation in sport, providing what has been described as a ‘unique and liberating experience’. 102 In his history of sport in the 20th century, Collins comments that for the first time young working-class women had the opportunity to play sport away from school, having taken the places of men in many factories where recreational facilities were increasingly provided for them. 103 During the summer of 1919 there were reports of the women’s game across the county. In May, the Undercliffe Ladies Cricket Club in Bradford accepted a challenge from a Manchester team, while in Hull, cricket was reported to be the favourite game of the girls present on the Reckitt’s Recreation Ground. In August, a match was played at Scarborough between a Miss Grace Cadman’s XI and a team of men, a report emphasising that this was ‘a properly played game’ in which the men had to go all out to win. In Sheffield, although cricket was less popular than golf, tennis, bowls and hockey, a letter in the press in September suggested the formation of a cricket club for ‘lady cricketers’. Matches against men had been restricted to playing wounded soldiers or with men batting wrong-handed, but after the war A wonderful relief: 1919