Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

18 Introduction ‘It gradually got that you were free’ subtler than in the political arena. On 14 May 1903, less than six months before the formation of Emmeline Pankhurst’s militant Women’s Social and Political Union, the London Daily News cricket correspondent mused on the women’s game. Astounded and impressed by the sight of a woman bowling overarm, he asked himself which women would get into first – Parliament or the Marylebone Cricket Club? 24 It took another 16 years for a woman to enter Parliament as an equal, but another 96 before the same could be said at Lord’s. Other successes were certainly recorded in the interwar years, but it is likely the greatest achievement was in challenging and changing popular perceptions of women’s physical and mental capabilities. By 1937, women’s cricket was granted direct state funding with the aim of improving national fitness and increasing the number of girls playing the sport. Although meagre, the funding was symbolically momentous as it signified the dramatic shift the sport had experienced. From near-universal ridicule, competitive women’s cricket had gained the approval and implicit backing of the state in less than two decades. As one male commentator put it in 1937, ‘one thing at least is proved by the women’s cricket test matches against Australia… the failure of W.G. Grace as a prophet.’ 25