Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

13 Introduction ‘It gradually got that you were free’ to rehabilitate on the one hand, and to raise money for charities on the other – comfortably joined forces. In July 1917, St Leonards and Hastings women’s cricket clubs united to play a game against the Canadian military hospital located nearby, and in doing so raised money for the soldiers’ comfort fund. Charitable women’s football matches were also frequently played by factory sides throughout Britain in an effort to ‘do their bit’ for the Tommies fighting on the front or recovering at home. 17 By publicly displaying the athletic female body for money, albeit charity, cricketers were able to visibly challenge popular assumptions that women were physically and mentally ill-suited to strenuous or competitive activities, and were by nature and necessity domestic creatures. Playing in their capacity as guardians of public and private morality, women framed their cricket as an act of patriotic selflessness and civic duty. Women were not challenging men at the wicket, but helping them. Cricket was seen to be much more than a game. For many men and women, from all walks of life and throughout the country, it encapsulated the spirit of Englishness. Unlike any other cultural (let alone sporting) product, it was the quintessential expression of English moral worth, played with fine spirit, temperament and fairness. German journalist Rudolph Kircher wrote in 1928 that it was ‘a phase of English mentality, a key to the Englishman’s soul… the most typical of all English games.’ It was an educational and moral instrument, crucial to the education of boys for over a century, and the perfect training ground for young soldiers too. The remedy for a selfish boy was cricket, where he could learn the value of team work and comradeship. The same could be said of the undisciplined, Convalescing soldiers play cricket at Harefield Military Hospital with English and Australian nurses, c. 1916. (Royal London Hospital archive)