Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

101 Separate but Equal: Feminism Divides the Game administrators were quick to stress its pedagogical value over any political motivations. Instead, the game was spoken of in terms of lifting social restrictions, and while presented as apolitical, an undercurrent of feminism was never entirely absent. ‘I remember being shouted at as I walked down the street carrying a hockey stick’, Pollard recalled of life in the late-Edwardian era, ‘why are women and girls with an instinct for play looked at askance?’ Before the First World War, she wrote ‘there is no doubt about it that hockey for ladies was born on the crest of a wave of feminine rebellion and release from restrictions’. 24 While feminismmay have been denied by hockey and cricket administrators in the interwar years, fearing the public backlash, it is undeniable that the origins and philosophy of both organisations remained rooted in the quest for liberation. Publicly, it was convenient to believe it simply disappeared after 1918, but this was not the case. Unlike the Women’s Institute or Mothers’ Union, sporting bodies were not organisations of married women who felt that their civic worth was rooted mainly in the home and family. Therefore, the belief that women’s sport could stoke the fires of gender conflict – fires that had destroyed many cricket pavilions – was pervasive and compelling. The popular public denouncement of feminism in the interwar years meant, like their hockey-playing sisters, women cricketers were careful not to align themselves to this movement. Such a move risked alienating their supporters and emboldening their opponents. The outward appearance of the WCA as heavily reliant on male support, unwilling to challenge the domestic ideal or compete with men on the field of play has led some historians to conclude they held no feminist motivations. 25 However, no women’s organisation, feminist or otherwise, called for an end to domesticity between the wars. 26 Where women’s football had been banned in 1921 for being too provocative, cricketers were aware public image mattered most in the battle to establish themselves. Women’s Cricket , the WCA’s monthly magazine, persistently reminded players to adhere to a strict dress code and etiquette ‘as any false step – any power offended – even by the sight of bare legs… may have repercussions that can undo the work of years.’ The Association remained preoccupied throughout the interwar period with attracting the ‘right kind’ of press coverage that granted ‘proper recognition.’ Sometimes this meant making painful choices to hide any possible accusation of political radicalism. For example, Betty Archdale was dropped for most of the highly publicised 1937 Ashes series because of her work with Ellen Wilkinson, which risked exposing the Association to accusations of provocative feminist politics. 27 Like the Women’s Hockey Association, the WCA maintained their all- female governance was not ‘anti-man’, as Marjorie Pollard put it, but merely upheld the dominant belief in separate social spheres for men and women. ‘It would be foolish to imagine a woman as secretary of a rugger club’, she wrote in The Observer in 1935. Rather than try and compete with men, their ban on mixed-sex cricket was explained as a safeguard