Cricket Witness No 4 - Women at the WIcket

21 Out of the Darkness: The Game Emerges their masterful, exciting and orderly play. Officials and former players praised their temperament and athleticism. Government funding had been secured to increase participation from girls living in poorer areas, and was soon set to increase. The BBC had commissioned radio and television airtime for the sport, including running commentaries, and a propaganda film was in production. By the start of the Second World War more women were playing cricket regularly in England than ever before. In fact, there was three times as many as when England hosted and won the World Cup in 1993. The sport was in decline for most of the post-war years and many issues that hindered it persisted throughout the 20th century. Female cricketers remained second-class (or even third-class) athletes in the eyes of the public, and struggled to access facilities, resources and support from men’s clubs that they desperately relied upon. Women battled for recognition in all walks of life, and that did not exclude the cricket field. The game was dominated by wealthy, single ex-public-school girls, although more married and working-class women gradually adopted the sport. 4 The WCA recognised the devastating impact the war had been to the development of the emerging pastime. Games ceased almost entirely in wartime. The 1939/40 tour of Australia was swiftly cancelled, and the schoolgirls in Canada were hastily brought home. 5 Austerity, competition for resources and the continued disruption of war lingered into the 1950s, and were just some of the issues that plagued the sport. Yet the melancholy of their 1945 meeting could not suppress the irresistible optimism, pride and enthusiasm for the game they loved and helped forge. This attitude had first spawned the Association and would propel its members through the ridicule and scorn they persistently faced, and acted as a shining, distant beacon during the bleak war years. This book is about the story of the pioneer generation that first established cricket for women and girls. Cricket before the Great War The idea of a national organising body for women’s cricket was conceived in the summer of 1926, by a small group of hockey players while holidaying in the village of Colwall, Herefordshire. After several days of play at Malvern College, the group ‘discussed how cricket could become real for us – no longer to be an elusive thing, that one played half afraid of ridicule.’ 6 The body was formally established on 4 October 1926 at a meeting held at the Ex-Service Women’s Club in Victoria, London, attended by 19 representatives from existing clubs, schools and physical training colleges. This was not an uncontested decision. Two voted against and others expressed their opposition, almost certainly feeling it was too early, bold and hazardous a step for a sport with so few clubs in existence. The initial aim of the Association was to develop the sport through promoting and assisting the formation of clubs, largely through stimulating interest in girls’ schools and colleges. The following summer witnessed the start of such attempts with WCA tours of the north and west of England, playing a total of 49 matches against local women’s